Tomorrow Was Made for Some
by blacktop
Summary: Reese and Carter navigate rough waters through a year of shocks and challenges that threaten their shaky relationship. Fusco, Shaw, and Finch offer well timed support through the unfolding crisis. Rated a strong T for adult sexuality and its messy, unplanned consequences. This multi-chapter story was co-authored with the patient and talented rose griffes.
1. Chapter 1

**Authors' note: The title of this story is taken from the song, "For All We Know," music by J. Fred Coots, lyrics by Sam M. Lewis. Many artists have recorded versions of this classic, but the one by Nina Simone strikes a particularly poignant tone.**

 _For all we know  
We may never meet again  
Before we go  
Make this moment sweet again  
We won't say goodbye  
Until the last minute  
I'll hold out my hand  
And my heart will be in it_

 _For all we know  
This may only be a dream  
We come and go  
Like the ripples on a stream  
So love me tonight  
Tomorrow was made for some  
Tomorrow may never come  
For all we know  
Yes, tomorrow may never, never come  
For all we know_

Fusco could never understand why the peanut shells didn't crack when Reese stepped on them.

The wide-planked floor of Barney's was worn smooth by decades of foot traffic –- the bar's complement of guilty and innocent plodding back and forth between the booths and rickety tables, always accompanied by the spiky crunch of discarded shells underfoot.

Like the familiar smells of stale beer and day-old hot dogs, the peanut shells of the old neighborhood bar denoted home to Fusco.

After years of steady patronage, drunk or dried out, he had grown to welcome that crackling sound. It was a sort of aural comfort food, the assurance that at least a few things in this screwed up world never changed.

He could count on the friendly mess on the floor of Barney's to be dry and gritty, its sound a textured undercurrent to the waves of laughter and gossip that surged through the stuffy room during the exaggerated Happy Hour which extended from three to nine on Friday nights.

The crowd, the noise, the remnants of daylight seeping in through the windows, all of this was protective, Fusco figured, just a little insurance, like the peanut shells on the floor.

Except, it seemed, when the Ghost in the Suit was creeping around.

Reese had asked for the meeting, so Fusco had chosen the location.

Barney's was his home turf, a setting he picked to bolster his courage in the face of what he expected would be another barrage of warnings from Reese.

These regular death threats had gone from horrifying to just scary to annoying over the months of their collaboration. Normalized danger seemed to be a hazing ritual, as if he had to pass through some elaborate rite to join Reese's tiny club of crusaders. Fusco hoped by now he had emerged from the worst of the ragging, his nerves shredded but not severed by the abuse.

Mostly, Fusco had learned to brush off these threats, but when Reese slipped into the booth without the tell-tale crunch of the peanut shells it was still a frightening experience.

Heart clutching, sweat raising, teeth clicking, all rolled into one moment of terror. The lights seemed to dim in the already smoky bar and for a second Fusco thought all the other patrons had ceased talking when Reese materialized before him. A trick of the mind, he knew. But Fusco remained both thrilled and embarrassed that Reese could startle him into such churning turmoil after all this time.

He nodded at Reese to acknowledge his arrival, but kept quiet in part to avoid emitting the squeak he knew was caught at the back of his throat. Fusco decided to wait on Reese to launch the first salvo, so he took a long swig from the tonic water in front of him.

Dark and still, the man focused his shark-dead eyes at a point on the wall over Fusco's head.

"Lionel, you've been talking with your HR pals again, haven't you?"

Fusco shook his head to dispel images of black water sliced by a brutal, smiling fish. Reese took the head movements as a denial.

"I know where you go, Lionel, and I see what you do. Don't ever forget that. And don't lie. It won't work."

Time to come back at Reese with a rejoinder that was equal parts apology and pointed probe into the other man's softer feelings.

"Look, I don't know what you're thinking there. But I'm watching my partner's back."

Fusco knew that this hadn't always been the case, hadn't been the hallmark of his shaky start with Carter. But loyalty was a trait he prized above all else. It didn't matter if he couldn't keep a wife and saw his boy only every other weekend. Carter was his partner now, so he had her back. And Reese had to know that much about him.

"Then just consider this a friendly reminder. Lionel."

Reese smiled with a tight movement of his lips that showed the crooked bottom teeth just a little.

"Incentive to keep you both safe."

Fusco rubbed his eyes and opened his mouth to offer the other man a drink, they were in a bar after all and the normal people all around them were getting loaded. But he shut his trap against the hospitable impulse and decided to let Reese spit out what was really bothering him.

He knew part of it, of course.

The last two weeks had been a nightmare, a grim alternation of tedium and suspicion. Carter had been suspended after the botched raid and her fatal shoot-down of that perp. _Unarmed_ perp according to Terney's story. But Carter denied it and Fusco believed her, even if no one else in the precinct did.

Like he told Reese, Fusco had her back, despite the sneaky looks and snarled whispers that curled around the squad room during the week she was suspended.

Then when Carter got back to work, it was even worse.

As if she felt she had something to prove, she churned through assignments like a tornado with teeth, barking orders at him, which was alright, and at the uniforms and techs, which was a recipe for disaster.

If the guys lower down the ranks weren't on your side, you could count on catching hell anytime a case turned sticky.

Carter was good police, she knew how to work with colleagues up and down the line of command. But in this crisis, with HR pressing hard on her, she was losing her balance and her self-control. Fusco could sense her floundering in these new circumstances. He tried to cover for her rudeness, for her occasional over-eager assumptions, for her hard-charging tactics which ended up cracking the heads of as many police as perps. But he couldn't be everywhere all the time.

He had her back, like he said, but that protection cost him too.

When the waitress came around for orders, Reese asked for a bottle of Sam Adams and Fusco renewed his tonic water. The two men remained quiet, tense, lost in their thoughts until the girl came back with the drinks and a bowl of salted peanuts in the shell.

Fusco wanted to push the talk, put Reese on the defense a little, so he broke the silence after each had taken a long pull from his drink.

"So, why don't you check with Carter yourself about how she wants to be protected and all?"

He knew more than he was going to say about that relationship, but he didn't think it was worth risking his ass to call out Reese about this entanglement with Carter.

Fusco wasn't a fool or virgin.

He had sensed the quivering wire of attraction drawing them together from the earliest days of their collaboration. It was a sex thing, sure; desire was easy to see, with or without a detective's badge.

But Fusco suspected it was something more than that, right from the start, some fellow feeling made up of shared experiences and a common sorrow that bound them together. He wasn't even sure if they knew what it was, really.

But as Carter and Reese wrangled and carped and circled each other, Fusco noted a longing underlying the tension and vowed to stay out of the line of that fire. He guessed they had started up some sort of casual arrangement; not sure exactly when, but he was positive they were an on-again, off-again thing.

Irregular but intense, just like the two of them, he figured.

Of course, he would always protect his partner, but he had to look out for his own ass too.

Good choice as it turned out.

"She's not talking to me."

Reese's confession slipped out unplanned, judging from the way his mouth shut down tight right after finishing the sentence.

The man fiddled with his beer bottle, dragging a nail across the damp label, marring the face of the cheery patriot. Fusco pretended for a moment that his tonic water had taken on fascinating new depths.

Fusco knew he was going to regret opening his trap, maybe regret it for a long time to come if both of them decided to unload on him, but he did it anyway.

"I'm thinking she's got plenty of reasons to be pissed at you right now."

Fusco did a quick count of all the reasons he did too, but that wasn't the topic at the moment. Besides being pissed at Reese never worked out well for him: lots of bile, nothing to show for it.

That prompt seemed to knock a little chink in the wall around Reese.

"I just wanted to make sure she was safe."

He continued tormenting the beer label, peeling off pieces of Sam Adams' face which fluttered to the table between them.

Fusco decided to let loose with the strongest volley at his disposal; he was all in now, his head swimming with a kind of drunken bravado, even though he was stone sober. Fortifying him wasn't the alcohol of his youth, but a new and powerful sense of the rightness of things. For his partner, for himself, even for this troubled man before him.

"Terney's dead, isn't he."

Although phrased as a question, Fusco didn't let his voice rise because it wasn't really an inquiry at all, just a statement of stark fact.

The department was buzzing about Terney's disappearance.

No one seemed to actually regret the apparent loss; Terney, with his slick ways and braggadocio, had never been a beloved member of the blue brotherhood. But most cops were worried either that he would make an untimely return like some NYPD zombie, or that his death would unravel all those cozy arrangements which kept HR's operation humming along.

Rethinking their decision to back Terney's story, the two juvenile unis had quickly recanted their testimony about Carter's involvement in the shooting, their lies blown down in the winds raging through the HR leadership gap left by Terney's absence. The precinct, the entire department really, was spooked with the evidence mounting daily that Terney's disappearance was permanent.

Reese didn't blink at the accusation, which was as good as a confirmation. He held Fusco's eye for a long moment, then returned to picking at the bottle.

Fusco kept at him, not angling for more information about the assassination, but about its fall out for Carter.

"So if I figured it out, you know she did too. And I'm guessing that she didn't think her job was worth another cop's life. Even a dirty one like Terney."

The beer label destroyed, Reese looked up at Fusco with a startling softness in his cool eyes.

"What do _you_ think?"

His voice seemed shrunken, almost quavering, and Fusco paused before replying to make sure he had heard the question right.

"I think anyone working for HR gets what's coming to 'im."

This was the closest to a personal philosophy Fusco was ever going to dole out.

He knew there had been a time when _he_ could have been the one on the wrong end of Reese's private vendetta. And imagining Terney's last moments, cornered, piss staining his pants as the unblinking shark glided toward him, was enough to send an icy tremor scuttling down his spine.

So maybe Fusco felt a little sorry for Terney having to bite it that way. But apart from that twinge of sympathy, he was just so damn glad Terney was dead, happy the weasel couldn't hurt his partner any more.

And beyond that, there was pure self-interest: he was amazed that yet another HR shakeup had left him unharmed. Call him a cockroach, a rat, any kind of vermin; it didn't matter, surviving felt good.

If Reese was Carter's guardian angel, Fusco liked finding a little place for himself under that sheltering wing too.

Fusco knew the only reason he wasn't curled up in a flea-bag hotel right now, sucking on a bottle of rot-gut and puking his life away was thanks to this asshole.

And the only reason his job - his life - made sense right now was because Carter had steered him back from the brink, helped him see that he could be a good cop again, like he meant to be starting out.

He owed them both big, a secret debt he carried with pride, even if he'd never tell them.

Glancing up again at Reese's hooded expression, in which guilt and fear seemed to play tag across his features, Fusco thought he knew what was troubling him.

So he wanted his next words to be reassuring without giving Reese a free pass right away.

"Look, HR's not gonna do anything drastic right now. They gotta lay low for a while. The brass downtown is itching to climb up their ass if they could only get a foot hold. They got IAB swarming all over those two uniforms, turning the screws tight to squeeze out a story that sticks."

Reese's face sharpened, his eyes glittering with focused attention as Fusco continued the analysis.

"The funny thing is, those Internal Affairs narcs got nowhere else to look with Terney out of the picture. But neither does Carter. She's in the clear now, but with no allies to offer cover for her position, she's exposed in the department, alone."

"She didn't say anything to me."

Reese spoke slowly, as if fitting together jagged pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that interlocked the HR cabal with his own tenuous relationship with Carter.

"Well, she wouldn't, would she?"

His lips thinning to a grimace, Reese sighed and reached for a peanut. Cracking it between two long fingers, he pulled out the meat and flicked the shell to the floor. He studied the nut for a long while but never popped it into his mouth.

Fusco was poised for a counter argument, an acid interpretation that minimized the danger to Carter.

But although Reese remained mute, the silence seemed different this time, open, even warm somehow.

Maybe, grudgingly, the man finally admitted some kind of value in Fusco, some use beyond that of a sidekick with a snappy quip and a quick gun.

By not arguing, maybe Reese signaled acceptance of Fusco's insights into both the deadly politics of the NYPD and the messy knots that tied him and Carter together.

Reese stood abruptly, twisting his hips to slide out of the booth in a single movement. This interview with the ghost was over.

He threw the uneaten peanut to the floor and without a sound turned toward the door of the bar.

As Fusco watched, Reese sliced through the giddy crowd which parted for a moment, quieting in anxiety or flat-out dread, then closed again after his dark passage.


	2. April -- Free Falling

A week ago Carter had careened across the rain slicked streets of her city, rescuing a mob boss from execution. In the rearview mirror she had watched as the surprise on Carl Elias's face dissolved into an amused smirk as they jostled together through the uncharted seas of complicity and lawlessness.

From the back of her van, in counterpoint to his glib patter, Elias's wrists had rattled in their old-fashioned cuffs, the racket scratching her mind as she drove through the night in frantic search for safe haven.

It was a good rescue, she was sure of that. The right thing to do in a compromised situation, but still the fall-out was clouded and dangerous, the repercussions dark for both of them.

Less than a week ago Carter had stood over the skinny body of a nameless perp she had shot down in a dirt yard, watching the surprise on his face drain away into submission and then gray nothingness. When she crouched over him, the kid's fingers had twitched in a last gesture of futile aggression as the unfired gun slipped to the dust at her feet.

It was a clean killing, she was sure of that, the only choice in a lousy situation. She knew it was the right thing to do. And she clung to that bright certainty through the murky swill of paperwork, insinuating questions, and official complaints that swamped her after.

Now she felt woozy and unsteady, her mind clogged with the debris of these two desperate acts.

Shocked by Terney's betrayal and the suspension that resulted, her stomach heaved with the recognition that the cops she had trusted were not solid piers she could hold on to, but treacherous anchors dragging her down into the mire of corruption.

Now Terney was gone, fallen down a black hole with no trace and no mourners. She had her suspicions about who was responsible for the disappearance. Fusco's silence was eloquent in its own sketchy way; she didn't blame him for keeping Reese's secret. She found she couldn't really blame Reese either, although she wanted to.

Her balance overthrown with the successive jolts of these queasy discoveries, Carter found herself drawn to Reese's door again.

She hesitated before pounding on the metal surface. It was sticky daylight, they weren't on a case, no weapons drawn, or innocents threatened. She had no excuses or pretexts for stopping by his apartment uninvited.

This visit was unplanned and while Reese was as flexible in his hours as his outlook, it had been a while since they had seen each other and longer since they had last had sex. So she was unsure of the welcome he would offer.

She wasn't even sure herself what she wanted from this visit. Suddenly it seemed presumptuous to test their tentative relationship in this manner; they weren't best buddies or confessional pals. Were they even partners at this point?

But here she was and it wasn't her style to back down in a crisis, even one of her own making.

So she knocked.

After two short raps the door flew open. Reese greeted her with a solemn look, his face drawn and paler than usual, she thought.

No suit jacket, the belt of his dark trousers unbuckled and partly obscured by the loose tails of his white shirt.

The cowlick's steely wires sprang away from his shiny forehead, adding to the frazzled appearance announced by a two-day old stubble. His eyes, hooded and narrow, scanned her face then her body; searching for motive or perhaps assurance that she wasn't trailing trouble in her wake. In her black jeans and heavy leather jacket, she imagined she looked like a fugitive. Which she was, in a way.

With a quick glance at the empty hallway, he stepped back to let her in.

"Joss."

He said her name as an invitation but also as a question, one for which she had no immediate answer.

He didn't retreat into the apartment, but kept them pinned just inside the entrance below the sleeping loft that overhung the doorway. He took up most of the space that way, the span of his shoulders almost blocking out the light from those oversized windows; she felt both trapped and aroused by the intimacy of the setting.

"Fusco told me about the suspension."

Riding up in the elevator, she had already decided what she would not tell him.

"Yeah, I'm just waiting on the inquiry results. It's all I can do right now."

She wanted to hang on to this job, to this work she found so honorable and rewarding. Being a cop wasn't a duty for her now, it was a calling she cherished.

John lowered his voice to a whisper and stepped closer, his breath wafting warm and sweet over her face.

"How are you holding up?"

"Oh, I'm…"

She wanted to say _fine_ , but that was a lie and they were well past offering misdirections and platitudes to each other.

So she switched to "Okay" as a feeble substitute.

The sound of her voice cracking over the easy word embarrassed her and unbidden her hand flew to her throat. She was so much less than Okay. Her job was endangered for something she didn't do. She was scared: her career, her son, her partner, her life were all threatened and she couldn't see a way out of the mess.

And then it came to her that this strange man standing in front of her was the only person in her life she was neither scared for nor frightened of.

Such a peculiar feature for a dead man, a distinction that made her heart swell and her insides clutch with desire as she considered it.

Peering into her face, John seemed about to speak again.

But, if he wanted to say something comforting in response to her turmoil, he abandoned the idea and instead cupped her cheek with his left hand. Bending down he pressed his lips to hers, the touch dry, the contact light and fleeting. When their lips separated, John didn't pull back, but set his forehead to hers, breathing deeply.

His right hand splayed against her hip, a finger gliding inside the belt loop at her waist. Using that arm as a guide, she slid her hand past his shoulder to his neck, curving her palm to fit the hard line of his jaw. His pulse felt quick and steady under her fingertips.

"Joss."

This time her name slipped out as a prayerful murmur, dense and wet.

Inquiry had transformed into conviction and he passed his right hand to the small of her back, pulling her in closer. She could feel the heat throbbing through her from his chest and stomach, the warm waves pounding beneath her skin in a sturdy rhythm. Without her consciously summoning it, the erotic call and response that drove their interactions was set off all over again.

He was here, solid and real within the circle of her arms, and she held onto him. Not clutching, not desperate, she hoped. Even as the ancient yearning coiled and her gut pitched and trembled again, she was mindful of a reserve she still needed to maintain. They could capsize so easily, loose their moorings completely, if she didn't hold on.

He sighed and gathered her tighter still, as if he would absorb her through his skin if he could. They swayed, hip against hip, and the movement felt like the sea, choppy waters inside her calming into a placid tide for the first time in many weeks. In the interlude that followed, their breathing started to synchronize and the knot inside her chest loosened just a bit.

"I was worried." Still murmuring, his lips now moist, brushed against her cheek.

The lowness of his tone and the urgency reminded her of the last time they had spoken, before Elias, before the shooting, before betrayal and reprimand and suspension.

She remembered hearing sirens in the background and the way John's voice caught and hitched as his attention shifted from her to the drama unfolding around him. Later she had learned about a car crashing over the freeway's side rail, two passengers scrambling from the wreckage to steal a helicopter. She knew right away, the hair-raising escape and the bravado could only be John. He made freeing a criminal mastermind from execution seem boring by comparison.

And today _he_ was the one who was worried about _her_.

Now he tilted her head up with his hand; she felt like a child's doll as he positioned her just so. Their lips met again, but this time the hesitation had burned off, and his kisses took on a furious intensity. She had to cling to his shoulders to keep her balance in the fierce onslaught.

Other times, months ago, the sex had been careful and controlled, a statement of unspoken fragility or doubt.

This desperate concentration was new, the probing tongue, teeth tugging at her lower lip, hand clasping the back of her head to hold her mouth in place to receive his thrusts. She felt a pinch when a strand of hair snagged on a nail as he dug his fingers into her scalp.

Somehow, without her defining it, his urgency became her own. She claimed it completely, wanting what he wanted now.

Her hips translated the rhythmic pressure from his, her legs buckled and capered around his thighs as he guided her backwards. As she bumped into the wall behind them, he paused, eyes glittering with barely suppressed hunger.

The apartment's sunny expanse darted and blinked beyond John's broad shoulders, a collage of light and dark shapes shifting as he bent over her.

She could see him more clearly now, as if the first kisses had opened his face so that his grave expression was more visible to her.

She could see the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, the light blue of his irises rimming the dark pupils. Even the deep crevices usually shadowed in purple at the inner corners of his eyes seemed illuminated and glowing as he stared at her now.

 _This_ , this beauty was what she desired, what she needed right now, even if she hadn't cared about it before and might not ever again. In this moment, with this man, she wanted what he wanted.

John leaned in, kissing a line from her mouth to her jaw, approaching the sensitive juncture of her neck. Tasting his way to her collar bone, his tongue made hot swirling patterns over her skin that sent sparks shooting to her toes. He pushed the clumsy leather jacket off her shoulders, inciting a shimmying movement in her arms to work it off. The jacket fell to the floor in an inelegant heap at her feet.

In the revealed V-neck of her silky gray blouse, his clever tongue found the swell of her breasts and set to sucking there, a blind rooting that shocked her nipples into attention.

Working over the buttons of the blouse, John gave up halfway down and just pushed the shirt as he had the jacket. But her hands caught in the blouse's narrow cuffs, pinning her arms behind her against the wall, pressed by the warm weight of his insistent body.

She felt bound then, just a little, her squirming only increasing the delicious sensation of entrapment and compulsion. As she moved against him, the position thrust her breasts higher, so that the lace of her white bra cut sharply into their upper curves. She wanted him to relieve the pressure there, the tension straining everywhere inside her, the desire pushing along every vein in her body.

John cupped the weight of one breast then the other, tracing a long finger over the lace pattern incised on her flesh. He lifted the right breast from its enclosure, tightening his hand until the pressure drew a strangled sigh from her. He relaxed and then gripped more firmly, setting up a rhythm that distracted her from his hidden movements to lower the zipper on her jeans.

She could see his fingers playing over her breast, exciting the nipple to a painful erection. _Light and dark._ She thought of the stark contrast of his uniform. Of black hair framing his face. Of the sun and shadows in his apartment. Of pale fingers twisting dark nipples.

She could feel the knuckles of his other hand probing her stomach as he pushed down on the stiff denim. The relentless bump and poke as his fingers slid past her scar, worrying the metal and the fabric and teasing her damp curls as they tumbled and pulled.

Conflicting urges rose in her: she wanted to cover herself, her exposed breast, her throbbing nipple, the little red crescents made by his nails in her tender flesh; she felt more naked now than she had ever been before. But she also wanted to guide his hands to complete their task, to release her from this torment, to take her without delay.

With her hands still trapped by the shirt cuffs, she couldn't follow either of her impulses. Neither fleeing nor helping were within her power.

"Joss."

He said her name again and she bucked her hips forward at the plea in his voice.

He lowered his head, unfastening the front clasp of her bra so that if fell away to tangle with the blouse on her arms.

Shifting her torso to the right, she aligned her breast with his mouth and shuddered when he took a first pull from her nipple. The kaleidoscope of colors folded with the rhythmic motion of his jaw: she could see his pink tongue lapping at her breast and from above the silver strands at his temples disappeared and his bobbing head appeared dark against her body.

With her wrists bound, jeans crumpled around her ankles, and mind a jumble too, she was startled when John bent to kneel in front of her.

"I want to see you."

He punctuated his words with a kiss to her belly button. His mouth felt soft and wet against her skin.

"In the light."

His nose and lips pressed against her panties, he planted open-mouthed kisses against her mound. Her head fell back against the wall, the soft thudding sound causing John to pause for a moment. He resumed the purposeful trek of his hands, sliding his fingers over the crease where her bare thigh met her panties, then down her legs, tugging the panties down as he moved.

As she leaned back against the wall for support, he pulled off panties and jeans, tossing them to the side with her jacket.

From his lowered position, John glanced up, his eyes shining as they raked across her body, his mouth slack but wordless. She felt worshiped then; the kneeling seemed an act of submission, of prayer even.

"You're beautiful."

His voice was firmer than before, no catch or hesitation as he spoke, his eyes undimmed by tears. He had offered this praise at other moments like this, kissing her waist, her belly, her sex, her inner thighs, the tender skin behind her knees.

She accepted it as a translation of other, richer phrases that neither one of them had yet claimed the right to utter out loud.

To shake off premonitions about declarations glibly given and easily retracted, she replied with a practical comment.

"You're wearing too many clothes, John."

With a few graceful movements, he stood to shed his clothing at her command, then helped to free her from the blouse and bra cuffing her wrists.

He reached for her again, his arms and legs, sinewy and hard, the ropy muscles bunching under pale skin as he moved against her.

"Say it again."

His strangled speech was urgent but confusing, her train of thought demolished in the sensations he was creating inside her with his touch.

She tilted her head to one side, a question unspoken.

"Say my name."

His fingers curved inside her, flexing in a promise of pressures yet to come.

Now she got it. The frank longing in his eyes formed yet another stanza of the prayer he had uttered earlier, need wrapped around the supplication as he offered it up to her.

"John."

She gripped his cock then with a firm move that made his brows jump and his eyes darken with desire. She could do this to him, for him.

He closed his eyes under the press of her strokes and implored again.

"Joss."

She wanted to push this show to its end; she needed the stretch and the dazzling friction of him and she needed _this_ , all of this, right away.

"Come on, then."

She wasn't surprised, not really, when John gripped her hips and shoved her upward against the wall. She braced her back against it and clung to his shoulders so she could wrap her legs around his hips.

His erection slid against her, almost where she wanted it. She let a moan escape at the nearness of her treasure and thrust her hips forward to spur him to complete her.

"Yes, _this_. Here."

His hands, so competent, moved from her waist to cradle her ass as they both adjusted their balance.

He looked a brief question at her and she felt his stomach molding to hers as their bodies took the decision away from their minds.

"Come on," was all that she could say, repeating her demand in a whisper against his temple.

She flung her head back again, hitting the wall with a softer thump as he lowered her until she took him into her body, clasping and clutching around him as they joined.

After that, she could only cling to his neck as he pushed into her, short quick thrusts at first, driving further and further with every stroke. As they gained confidence or lost their minds, she moved her hands from his shoulders, tracing the muscles of his biceps as they bulged and twitched. The momentum of their bodies in this flight created a centrifugal force which kept them suspended against the wall.

Gravity still held them, but the sensation was of somersaulting in space, propelled together to break the bonds of their own little lives and become something greater in the flying.

Unlike their previous encounters, John came first this time, his fierce orgasm a collision of energy and curses powering through her body to ignite her own incandescent climax. As she burst, sparkling aftershocks escaped her throat as sighs or gasps, alternating with his name.

Sinking to the floor when the blast was finally exhausted, his thighs and arms trembled violently and his hands were so slick with their sweat that she thought he would drop her.

But he held on and she held on, a prayer resolved if not answered.

Still joined, still pulsing, his hips nestled into hers, they clung together for a long moment, tangled among the discarded clothing.

They didn't have much to say as they dressed; stunned relief swam in the air, punctuated by awkward smiles and a hasty sip of tepid water to cover the silences.

The hot daylight was still thick and slippery when she left.


	3. July -- Revelation

Reese was startled when a drop of sweat splattered on the needle-nosed tools quavering in his hand.

Breaking into any house was usually the mindless effort of a minute; if he took more than three to pick a lock he usually resorted to less subtle tactics and just forced the door with a shoulder.

But this time, at Carter's apartment, the lock was defiant and impenetrable. Just as tough as she was, he thought with silent admiration.

Late July's heat wave was flaring in brutal mockery of the city's hopes for a moderate summer.

Reese had crossed town in one of Finch's hired cars, so the scorching sun hadn't really hit him until he bounded up the steps to Carter's place. But now, crouching before her door, he could feel the sweat condensing at the small of his back around the gun nestled there. His hands were slippery, his feet itched, and he had to blink rapidly to keep the perspiration from stinging his eyes.

Finally the lock succumbed and he entered the shadowed vestibule.

The living room was chilled and dark, even at mid-afternoon. He exhaled, squeezing out the anxiety of the break-in. The cool air soothed the skin on his neck and forehead and he took a deep breath to savor its refreshing calm.

He wondered at the expense of keeping the air conditioning going even when the occupants were away, but he figured Carter wanted to enjoy the immediate reward of cool temperatures at the end of her exhausting day on the beat. She didn't have the patience to wait for a cranky system to force frigid air through the apartment while she puffed and steamed.

Reese walked around the living room slowly, touching the varied textures of its furniture and decorations.

Everything was arranged just so: the angle of the framed photos on the mantle, the three matched candles on the coffee table, the precision pleats in the oatmeal-colored drapes hanging at the window overlooking the street. Even if he hadn't known of Carter's military background, he would have guessed it from the neatness of her home.

She seemed to leave nothing to chance, to consider all contingencies, to account for all possibilities.

The last time he had been here he hadn't been paying attention to the vacuumed ridges in the carpet or the lively pastel tones of the art work hanging over the credenza. He hadn't noticed anything about the place really. He'd only been paying attention to her.

Now he hesitated in front of the sofa. Its stiff contours didn't invite lounging, but he didn't know how long he would have to wait so he sat down. This was his first time sitting in this room. A new angle on her furniture, on her life.

He knew that Taylor's summer schedule included a two-week basketball camp at the end of July and that the daily sessions did not end until six. He also knew from Finch's vigorous surveillance that the boy had made arrangements with a teammate to attend a movie that evening. Oddly, Finch's prying didn't extend to knowing for sure whether Taylor planned to see the latest super-hero blockbuster or a zombie thriller that had debuted last week.

When Carter pushed back her door at last, Reese felt as if she had loosed a furnace in the dim and drowsy living room. Her uniform's dark creases carried heat into the apartment in a prickly cloak around her.

He noted that strands of her hair stuck to her cheeks and neck. As she walked through the door she unfastened an extra button on her stiff shirt, but she paused with her fingers at her throat when she saw him.

She didn't seem surprised to find him in her home; he supposed she was used to this aspect of their communication system by now. But she didn't unleash one of her sharp, exasperated comments either, the kind that usually set his blood racing. Instead she eyed him with a narrow gaze and spoke quietly.

"So it was either cool off in the public library or here, hunh?"

Her tone was resigned rather than annoyed, a change which set off little sparks of concern inside him.

"I wanted to see you."

"What for?"

This sounded like an accusation rather than an invitation, so he hesitated to respond. He needed to gauge her mood, so he let her lead the exchange.

"You and Finch know how to reach me when something comes up. You've got some kind of contraption set up in this house and probably in the precinct too, don't you?"

Without waiting for an answer, she turned her back on him and went to the kitchen. He could hear the shushing sound of the refrigerator being opened, the clinking of ice jostling under a stream of water from the tap.

When she came back to the living room he was surprised that she brought two tall glasses of cold water, one for each of them. He moved from the center of the couch to one end to make a space for her, but she continued to stand even after handing him the glass.

He took a long swallow, grateful for the relief, but unhappy that she remained silent as she retreated toward the window.

After downing half the glass, he decided that a direct question was the best way to break through.

"What's going on?"

"Going on?" She was determined be stubborn, it seemed.

"What's going on… with us, I mean."

"With us?"

Her clipped words and her seeming indifference were maddening. She was going to make him say it in plain terms, pulling it out of him with dead-eyed efficiency.

"Joss, do you want to… to end this?" He stroked his hand across the expanse of shadows between them.

 _This_.

The term she always used: Whatever _this_ is. We can't let anyone know about _this_. _This_ can't be anything more. He allowed her to define their relationship in a way that felt comfortable to her and _this_ was what she had always chosen. As if it were an animal of some undiscovered species, a creature whose naming would bring a curse down on them both.

Joss set her glass of water on the mantle, its shimmering side touching the large photo of Taylor grinning in his middle school graduation robes.

He watched her extract the cell phone from her pants pocket and take out the battery.

Her movements, so deliberate, even delicate, reminded him of how this all started. He thought of the burner phone he had given her, the way he had let his finger trail across her palm as he made the transfer, the electric charge that shot through him at that simple contact. The beginnings of their partnership all seemed so long ago.

She blinked her eyes quickly, as if remembering too. After a few moments she spoke in a whisper.

"I'm pregnant."

She looked toward the window, past the pale curtains. Then she darted her eyes in his direction for a rapid assessment of his face; hairline to mouth, chin to nose then to cheekbone. Never meeting his eyes directly, she glanced again out the window.

He read her expressions by instinct and could almost hear the words before she uttered them:

"I don't know what to do…" The fear, the ripples of uncertainty cascaded over her features as he watched.

He knew it was his turn to speak but he continued to hold his breath for another moment.

"What—how long?" He heard his voice crack in the search for words.

"Eight weeks, about."

She glanced at him again, her eyes huge, glassy. When she continued, they fixed on a point above his head.

"Sorry."

He wanted to sob then. Not at the revelation, but at her choked apology and all the distance and disunity conveyed in the simple word.

She took a deep shuddering breath and he did as well. He extended his hand to the empty space at the other end of the couch.

"Have a seat." The offer seemed so minimal, dry and unfeeling like a command rather than the phrases of comfort and solidarity he wanted to summon up.

Whether they were the right words or not, she acted upon them and sat heavily on the sofa, not near, but within reach.

They talked, first in short bursts, then in more convoluted sentences.

As they spoke, Reese's mind divided in two, one side pinpointing when the pregnancy had happened, the other observing with detachment their present conversation.

In between the halting phrases, his hands flexed on the couch, in secret imitation of the way they had gripped her hips as her legs wrapped around him. He remembered how their balance was thrown off, precarious and exciting as he pressed her against the wall, his fingers clasping her so tightly, one hand under her ass, the nails of the other digging into her thigh as it lifted to embrace him.

As she described in clinical terms the early warning signs and the first doctor's appointment, he felt far away, like he was staring at the two of them through the wrong end of a telescope. Her head tipped, his jaw clenched, their eyes darted without engagement. Obscured, their figures grew smaller and smaller in the spy glass until he realized it was impossible to track their true emotions in the cloud of shifting expressions.

When Carter gulped and stopped, blinking to keep back tears, one part of him wanted to comfort her, but his body, the cause of the calamity to begin with, stayed still.

POIPOIPOI

The blinking didn't really stop the tears, she knew, but Carter found the minute action comforting somehow: if she could control just this one part of her body then maybe the monumental rebellion growing inside her would be manageable.

As she talked, she watched the way John's hands clenched and released on the sofa next to her thigh. The contained energy and focus of the man seemed concentrated in that little repetitive gesture, disguising the real play of his emotions.

She didn't know which reaction from him she would prefer: towering disbelief, denial, shy enthusiasm, cool executive action. She wasn't sure if she wanted him to want this baby - her baby, their baby - or not.

She had resolved several days ago that keeping it was impossible. She knew they weren't a couple, never could be parents in any normal context.

She had been having sex with a man who killed for a living, bad father potential. She had a teenage son getting ready for college and a widowed mother marching steadily, however gracefully, toward old age. She needed to keep her job, keep her pension, keep her life on an even kilter.

At first, she had thought she would simply not tell John at all, get the job done, go on about their work as if nothing was the matter. So she had made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy. She had gotten as far as the clinic door before she turned away and fled to a diner for a cup of coffee. In that stainless steel sanctuary, the round of jagged breathing and tears had splattered coffee in little dribbles across the table top, causing the waitress to bring over a large stack of napkins in silent commiseration.

Now, as she turned her gaze to John, she could see the wheels turning in his head. Calculating, counting, analyzing, assessing behind those hard blue eyes as he would in the middle of a stake-out or before pulling his gun.

She expected him to ask a question, the one she had been asking herself ever since she realized the truth: How did this happen? I thought we were safe. How could this happen?

Instead his voice, wavering and thin, asked a different question:

"So what are you…thinking about?"

Open-ended, passive, soft instead of resolute.

Not an action-driven question with its implied answer – What are you going to do? Not an assertion or a command or even a suggestion. No hint of his own desires or hopes in the matter.

Maybe that was the truth of it at bottom: he didn't have any wishes or concerns, none big enough to bother her with at any rate. He was leaving the decisions to her, expecting her to shoulder this burden on her own.

She glanced around her living room. The familiar things crowded in from every wall and shelf. Each corner brought a reminder of the orderly life she had built. That careful life her foolish desire now threatened to topple. The photos of Taylor, her mother, herself in a holiday dress weren't soothing right now.

But she found the act of looking up at the mantle helped her not to cry. So she raised her head and stared past John's furrowed brow into the middle distance.

She knew for certain that she was on her own now; all these lives hung in the balance as she struggled to find a way to evade the consequences of her selfish and far too casual choices.


	4. July -- Landing

Saturday afternoon at Barney's was always slow, which is why Fusco had suggested the bar as a meeting place when Carter asked to see him.

The last time the partners had visited the watering hole, they had been celebrating the successful wrap of a thorny case that had chewed their asses for months. Erasing that one from the board was a surprising achievement, according to the captain's smarmy little speech congratulating them in front of the whole squad. Fusco felt their hard work and smart digging deserved a bit more than that grudging praise, but he wasn't going to complain and Carter let the faint insult go too.

Satisfaction was best enjoyed in private they agreed, so the partners felt justified in knocking back a few shots at Barney's when they shoved off from the precinct that evening.

That time it had been a short glass of neat bourbon for her and a perspiring tumbler of tonic water for him.

He was a little over a year on the wagon and her brief nod in narrow-eyed approval of his drink choice was its own reward. It mattered to him that Carter saw he had changed, gotten better than when she had first taken him on as a partner. It mattered a lot.

So when she called him Saturday morning while he was sorting his first load of laundry and mumbled a request for a face-to-face meeting, Fusco thought of returning to Barney's.

This time she ordered a tonic water to match his, a limp lime twist dressing it up.

He noted the change in her drinking habits and knew it fit with other clues he had pieced together over the previous four weeks. He wondered if this was going to be the moment when she finally let him in on her big news.

He tried to school his face so that he could look just the right amount of surprised – not horrified or anything, but leaning a little bit toward dismayed. He didn't want to give her the prissy maiden aunt pout. But maybe seeming too cool like some zoned-out hipster was not the way to go either.

As he pondered his options, Carter took a short sip, frowned at the tonic's bitter taste and then came out slugging, just like she always did.

"Look, Fusco, I want you to hear this from me straight."

Then she paused to take a big gulp of air and plunged on.

"I'm pregnant. About eight weeks now. It's…well, that's all there is to say, I guess."

Her resolve frittered away and she stuttered to a halt, her gaze pinned on the glass in front of her. She didn't take another drink, just fiddled with the drops of condensation winking on the glass, keeping her hands busy and her eyes averted.

Even though he knew what was coming, the reality of Carter's situation landed harder than he expected.

She was stuck in a harsh place – the toughest fix a woman cop could get herself into. He hoped she wasn't completely alone, but she sure was vulnerable and from the looks of it she was hurting too.

He wanted to assess how isolated she really was, so even though the next question was sort of blunt, he had to put it out there.

"You and… well… and the vigilante, then?"

Somehow all those snickering titles like _Wonder Boy_ or _Bane of My Existence_ didn't really fit a conversation about an unplanned pregnancy.

"Did John…?"

Fusco shot her a look of indignation and she didn't finish her question.

"John didn't tell me anything."

"You knew?"

"Yeah, I knew you and him were a thing. A while ago, actually."

After all, he had been the one forced to drag her away from Reese when the man was wired up to a bomb vest. He had borne the brunt of Reese's protective instincts concerning her welfare, leading up to their most recent confrontation right here in Barney's a few months back.

So yeah, he had eyes; he had figured it out, thank you very much.

"But… this?" She looked down at her body and he felt a heated wave of sympathy rush up his neck.

"Hey, I been around that block before, ya know. I remember how it goes."

Early on he had noticed the shortening of her stride, the looser sway of her hips, the increased flex in her knees. At first he just took these as little signs that she was getting busy between the sheets on a regular basis.

But then more things changed and he revised his conclusion. He noted that she took extra care going down stairs, that her lips looked chapped and creased, that the depressions under her eyes had turned cement gray. Her skin, usually glowing, looked pasty, like she'd been dipped in dust. Carter was rarely ill, never called out sick, and always kept her female complaints hidden. But this kind of special sickness he recognized right away.

Her changed appearance reminded him of how stunned his Anita had looked when they found out she was expecting.

It was more than thirteen years ago now, but he still remembered the faraway gaze of quiet panic that seemed permanently painted on Anita's face those first two months.

He was making a probie's salary, Anita's bank teller wages hadn't risen in three years, and repairs to the Dodge had torpedoed their skimpy budget. They were saving dribs and drabs for a down payment and had wanted to try for a baby in another year or two, when the tight money situation would surely ease up a bit.

Instead, Anita got pregnant, he got blindsided, and their marriage took the hit.

Unplanned, but cherished, that was how Lee had come into their life. An accident, one that permanently tainted his relationship with Anita, but such a happy gift all the same. The divorce still hurt, sure, but he would trade that marriage for Lee any day of the week.

Now he needed to know where Carter stood with Reese. He had sensed a rift between them in the spring, a chill in the relationship. But it must not have been all that cold of a cold war seeing how it turned out now.

"John already know about this?"

Carter nodded slightly, looking straight at him for the first time since they started talking.

"I told him two days ago."

She lifted her eyebrows and a kind of sad half smile tilted her lips.

Fusco needed to erase that anxious gloom before it overwhelmed the both of them.

"If you want me to hit him for you, just tell me. But you'll have to hold his arms."

She laughed then, a croaking grunt that sounded so much like a sob that the two of them glanced in opposite directions as if they had choreographed the evasive movement.

Saving them, the waitress rolled by just then to ask if they wanted refills for their drinks. Their eagerness for more tonic water must have goosed the girl, who hurried back on the double with the glasses topped off to the brim.

Fusco hoped they were done with the tough topics now, the big news already out on the table.

But after Carter took another gulp and then snagged the lime twist between her teeth, he sensed she had more to say. She pulled the rind from her mouth, pinching it so hard it split in two.

Then she finally came out with it:

"Fusco, I don't see how I can keep this baby."

He sucked in his breath.

He thought she was going to ask him about the advisability of an abortion.

But partners weren't supposed to have that kind of conversation. This wasn't a confessional and he was no priest.

Partners were supposed to talk about pensions and informants and promotions and autopsy reports and crooked lieutenants riding your ass. Professional stuff, tough things with fair solutions and results you could count on if you had each other's back.

Partners weren't supposed to talk about the other stuff. Like getting rid of babies. Or riding herd on the feral ghost you were hoping to tame. Or mending your trampled heart when everything went sideways and the taming didn't stick.

He had no answer to solve the question of Reese and he hoped like hell she wouldn't ask him for one.

So his release of breath came out a lot like a relieved gust when she took the conversation in a different direction.

"I know work is going to change… for the both of us. Not yet, but in a few months, whenever regs say I have to ride a desk."

She wrinkled her nose at the prospect of being corralled in the precinct house. He thought her downward half-grin looked shy, like she was trying to apologize for some kind of inconvenience she was throwing at him. So he took her line and tugged on it.

"Yeah, Carter, you know this means I get stuck working with Olson again."

"Detective Happy?" Her eyes squeezed in merriment.

"Yeah, that asshole has rocks for brains and soft-boiled gnocchi between his legs. A menace coming and going!"

They both laughed and in the altered atmosphere he hoped he was off the hook: Abortion talk sidestepped; relationship mess scooped up and tossed.

He felt safe once more. And she did too it seemed, because she brought up the pregnancy again.

"Fusco, there's no way I can raise this baby. You know that…so…"

She paused and took another gulp of tonic to wet the words that rushed out next:

"I'm thinking about adoption. Some days that's the only way that makes sense to me. Find some nice couple somewhere and give him to them when the time comes. But then I think of this kid coming into the world with so many strikes against him, I just don't know about trusting some stranger to raise him right."

She shuddered to a halt abruptly and Fusco thought she took the next sip of tonic to cover up the trembling he could see in her lower lip.

" _Him_ , hunh?"

"Oh, I don't know that for a fact yet. It's just how I imagine the baby right now. Next week, it'll be back to a girl again."

She hunched her shoulders against the tide of emotions and then shook her head.

Fusco hoped to God she wasn't going to start crying on him. He flung his eyes around the bar looking for the waitress, for a customer, anybody who was female and had a good stack of Kleenex in her purse.

But then Carter seemed to pull herself up, her eyes welling, but tears holding. So he grabbed one of the paper napkins stuck between the ketchup and the salt shaker and shoved it across the table towards her, just in case. This gesture, feeble as it was, seemed to encourage her, so she kept going with her tender thoughts.

"I don't have a clue about how to find an adoption agency or anything."

"Me neither, never thought about it, really."

Fusco paused, the silence not as dark or scary as he feared it would be.

His heart was rising in his chest, threatening to rattle right out of his mouth as he stared at her. And a wire band seemed to tighten around his head too. Pressing the truth into him, whether he pushed back or not.

It was clear now. They were in this fix together, all three of them.

He didn't know how her crisis –- their crisis –- had become his too. But it damn sure was.

Maybe it started on that lonely highway in Oyster Bay when Reese chose not to execute him even though he should have. Or that day Reese set up his transfer to the Eighth and partnered him with Carter. Maybe it was the second he pulled the trigger to save Reese from the HR captain who would have pistol whipped him to death.

Maybe in truth, it was some smaller, forgotten moment when their fates had become so tangled up that he couldn't tell where one thread ended and the others began. But he knew this attachment was the truth, as sure as he knew his own son's name.

As he thought his way around that development, he could feel the nose of a solution poking out of the darkness at him.

"But you know who might have a clue here? Four-eyes. He might be able to help us outta this jam. I bet he's got sources where he could get information on potential adoptive parents, agencies, lawyers, stuff like that, people who handle those kinds of arrangements."

"Harold? You think so?" Her bright eyes and flickering dimples signaled this idea struck a chord.

"Yeah, sure. Why not? Just don't look for me to hold your hand or something during that particular little chat. You're strictly on your own with Glasses."

He didn't add that he wasn't sticking his neck out to wrap up Reese's business, not after he had spent all summer wrestling with that slippery shark.

Advice was one thing, a little hand holding he could do, but getting out in front by going straight to the boss? Not in a million years.

He figured the nosy little grind would be pissed to the highest level of pissivity at evidence his precious ops had skipped the rubbers when they knocked boots.

Finch was fussy and careful, a stickler for planning, even when he was bending the law like a pretzel. Fusco felt pretty sure there was no way sex and its messy fallout fit into the man's mission statement.

But Carter didn't act worried. In fact, her upturned lips and warm eyes said she was satisfied with his suggestion to consult with Finch, a concrete step she could take as she waded forward into these uncharted waters.

They finished their drinks in two more slugs each and while he took off for the head, she dropped a couple of twenties on the table to cover the tab. She _had_ invited, after all.

The bone-white afternoon sun was still high as the partners separated on the sidewalk in front of Barney's. But Fusco felt a refreshing breeze whispering across his neck as he reached the corner.

Maybe the summer's relentless pounding was easing off, just a little.


	5. August -- Proving Ground

As he approached her exposed position on this steamy midday, Sam Shaw's slouch annoyed Reese.

He usually didn't mind her posture or anything else about her persona or style: she was what she was and he had no interest in trying to change her at this point in their association. He knew that Shaw liked to play the wild child, the untamable one on their little team; she enjoyed being the unpredictable joker who could throw the game with the flick of an eyelash or the twitch of a trigger finger.

Reese didn't think of Shaw as a partner - that was Fusco. Or a friend – that was Finch. Or whatever complicated, enticing, befuddling, entrancing thing Carter was to him – that was a different creature altogether.

He considered Shaw his colleague, a brother soldier in this undeclared war they were waging on behalf of the machine.

But stretched out now on a wooden park bench soaking up the August sun with a studied nonchalance, Sam Shaw seemed to him cavalier and needlessly provocative.

Annoying.

Reese didn't like the way she extended her short legs in their black skinny pants to take up too much room on the gravel path in front of the bench; the way her heavy black boots crossed at the ankle, dwarfing the dimensions of her slender calves; the way sweat droplets gleamed between her exposed breasts, the way her sinewy arms stretched along the back of the bench.

Defiantly unsexy, this sprawl dared anyone to sit next to her. Her cool feline demeanor, haughty and dangerous in any circumstances, grated on his nerves as he crossed the park to her now.

Shaw had called him to this meeting an hour ago.

In her usual sly way, she had kept the subject of the conference a secret, only ordering him to join her in this little out-of-the-way spot at an hour after the lunchtime crowd would have dispersed. He didn't know if she was working a case, following a lead, plotting some prank, or just playing hooky to aggravate Finch.

But he didn't dare ignore her summons in case she really needed his help, so he had arrived on time and anxious.

Although sweat plastered tendrils of black hair to her cheeks and throat, Shaw maintained the air of chilly disinterest she always projected as he sat down beside her. Refusing to acknowledge his arrival, she darted out her tongue to swipe at a smidgen of mustard on her right index finger, then flicked pretzel crumbs from her black tank top. Despite the moist film that coated her bare arms, she seemed composed and cool.

She kept her eyes on a clutch of tiny children who cavorted on the playground equipment in the center of the park. Re-crossing her ankles, she sighed a little, but otherwise remained silent.

The slides, swings, jungle gym, and see-saw were made of slick plastic in primary colors so garish they looked like a giant's candy unwrapped. Little boys and girls in genderless outfits of striped t-shirts and blue jean shorts ran madcap through the playground, a squabbling, shouting army of infants attended by camp follower nannies and parents.

Reese quickly sorted the nurses from the parents: the former watched their charges with harried expressions, ever fearful of losing a child and a paycheck in the same awful calamity. These young nannies, whether Scandinavian or African or Latina, had the same dark apprehension carved across their features.

In contrast, he thought the mothers assumed a more casual air; dressed in pastel sun dresses or pedal pusher slacks, they tracked the movement of their children with glances of determined nonchalance – hawkish but remote - giving their kids space to tumble and tussle on the dull red rubber shavings that cushioned the surface of the playground.

After enduring two minutes of Shaw's silence, Reese bared the needle.

"Finch has you spying on kindergartners now?"

She ignored the gibe and leaned forward, elbows digging into her knees as she continued to stare at the playground tableau.

"You know what I hate?"

Not waiting for him to answer this _non sequitur_ , she continued:

"Unnecessary secrets. Things that people keep from you for your own good."

She didn't bother making air quotes as she clipped off her sentence. It was too hot and Shaw was too economical in her movements to bother with the hand gesture. But Reese could hear where they would fit around the phrase "for your own good."

"You wanna know what Finch has me working on?"

She finally turned her head towards him and held his eye as she once again answered her own question.

"Getting more intel on potential adoptive parents."

He couldn't tell if the sneer that curved her lips was directed at Finch's unusual assignment. Or at the institution of adoption. Or at him.

His heart galloping, he looked away first.

Under Shaw's critical stare, he felt sweat pooling around the gun digging at the small of his back, reminding him he couldn't remove his suit jacket. He was sure she had chosen this sun-soaked bench precisely because it would discomfort him the most.

He hadn't discussed the situation with Shaw and never imagined he would.

He knew that from the outside his undefined relationship with Carter appeared to mimic the no-strings hook ups Shaw claimed to favor: occasional sex that provided dispassionate physical release, nothing more.

But this wasn't how he experienced his bond with Carter; over the months the sex had in fact intensified their emotional connection for him. But he guessed that Shaw might assume this pregnancy embarrassed him as an inconvenient nuisance. Rather than what it was: a precious life that stirred him to his soul.

He knew that Carter intended to find an adoptive family for the baby. She had mentioned it in their recent phone conversations as they veered cautiously beyond the details of current cases to address these more tender concerns.

Carter had told him she didn't see how she could raise the child on her own, couldn't imagine asking her mother or other relatives to take the lead either. Dropping her police career wasn't an option she would consider. And she didn't offer to quit Finch's mission despite its obvious dangers.

Adoption.

The idea jarred him. This child wasn't an orphan, left on the doorstep of the parish church in a basket, a baby abandoned by incompetent or frightened parents.

But hearing Carter go over all the options, her voice quavering, her words halting and careful, Reese had kept silent, only posing a question or two when she paused for reflection.

He wanted to give her room to share her feelings rather than oppressing her with his own at this stage.

This decision was entirely hers to make. He realized he was in no position to support a child, nurture it, and raise it to adulthood. The dangers of his job were overwhelming, as were the uncertainties that marked his daily life: secrecy, illegality, violence, and deceit. All of this disqualified him from parenthood, he knew.

She didn't have to say it out loud; he knew he was not in a place to offer her or the baby what they deserved.

At this point, he was just grateful that she was willing to share as much as she did with him. And he hoped that by holding his tongue now, he could expand their connection until it encompassed all that he desired.

He had believed that Shaw was firmly in Carter's camp. In her stand-offish style, Shaw appeared to like Joss better than anyone other than Bear. As far as he could see, the two got along in a girls-against-the-boys school yard solidarity that suited Shaw's take on feminism.

Her next comment confirmed his belief.

"Carter still gets to pick 'em. The parents. I just thought…Well…"

She scrubbed her hand over her mouth, pulling down one corner. This was Shaw struggling with sincerity and the unaccustomed sight tugged at his heart.

"Secrets are bullshit. You're in this as much as Carter is. And you should get to see them too. I mean, if you want to."

She took a big gulp of the humid air and as her eyes careened around the playground, Reese wondered if Shaw were re-thinking the offer. As if to forestall any reneging, she thrust her cell phone toward him.

"If she keeps to her schedule, you have about five minutes to decide if you want to see the first potential candidate."

Reese took the phone, greasy with Shaw's sweat, and hesitated a moment before clicking on the file.

He wanted this, wanted to know what Carter would see, what choice she would confront when the time came.

The photo that sprang onto the screen was bland in composition, an unoriginal studio set up for a holiday card: a white man with dirty blond hair and goofy reindeer jumping on his sweater smiled from the back of the family triangle. In front of him, perched on a stool was a pretty South Asian woman with dark hair arranged over one shoulder, the waves falling almost to her breast. Her skin was deep tan and shiny across her serious face. On her lap she held a little boy with tightly coiled black hair, bright black eyes, and skin several shades darker than his mother. The boy, clutching a stuffed snowman, was dressed in a Christmas sweater identical to his father's. And like his father, the little boy was grinning merrily.

"They already adopted one?"

Reese knew the situation was obvious and the question therefore stupid, but he was grateful to Shaw for giving him this opening and he wanted to engage her, make her part of this consideration.

"Yup. Called Steven. He's cute enough."

Shaw leaned back on the bench but kept her gaze on the phone's display.

Reese found her tone dismissive, of what he couldn't be sure. But he detected a softening of her eyes at the outer corners, which he took to mean Shaw thought the kid was adorable, but would never say so.

He wanted to ask more questions about this family, get as much information from Shaw as he could before actually seeing them.

He knew answers to all the trivial questions were in Finch's file somewhere: how long they had been married, how much money they earned, where they'd been educated and where they lived.

But other questions bounded through his mind, ones neither Finch nor Shaw could ever answer: did this man honor his wife? Did he adore this boy? Did he cherish being held a hostage of fate by this woman and this child?

Before he could pose the trivial questions or dwell further on the profound ones, Shaw hissed and kicked his shoe with her boot.

"Two o'clock. Entering now."

He saw the mother from the Christmas picture push open the park's iron gate and stand aside to let her son scamper towards the playground.

The boy seemed to know some of the other children, whom he greeted by name with shouts and squeals. Terry and Claudio on the seesaw and LeShawn from the swing responded with waves, their laughter bouncing from one fixture to the other as he ran across the yard.

The boy quickly climbed the slide and plunged down its yellow chute twice before his mother had settled herself on a tree-shaded bench at the edge of the playground.

Reese figured Steven was no more than five, or perhaps a particularly agile four year old. Like other kids, he was dressed in a red and blue striped t-shirt and navy shorts with an elastic waist. The pale flag of a Band-Aid flapped from one brown knee, drooping over a scab.

The mother watched her son with an attentive gaze, hands folded in the pleats of her sun dress, splashed with bold flowers in peach, lavender, and lemon. Her tan arms were dappled in shadows and Reese liked the way her head rotated in an unhurried manner as she followed the boy's dashes around the playground. She had pulled her black hair into a high pony-tail, its curling tip swishing over the zipper at her back.

After tackling the slide for ten minutes, Steven ran to the jungle gym and called out, "Mommy."

Reese thought his piping voice blended into a shrill chorus with those of all the other children, but the mother stood from her bench without hesitation and moved toward her son. She lifted him to the first rung of the jungle gym, balancing his sneakered feet on its round green pipes and molding his little fingers around another pipe at chin height. As he teetered along the periphery, she let her hands hover around his waist, not clasping it, but always near. Protective, careful, but giving him permission to explore, even to fall.

Liberated and secure, Steven inched his way around all four sides of the jungle gym before asking to be lowered to the ground again. His next stop was a pink-and-white spotted pony bouncing on a low spring and he mounted this steed without any help.

Reese's thoughts fled to other summers, other playgrounds.

He remembered his own mother strapping him into the leather bucket of a baby swing and pushing him high into the sky, her laughter and black hair wafting around her face as she rocked behind him. Much later - after things got worse - he learned that the powdery scent on her shoulders was lavender.

Had there been jungle gyms, too? Slides? Fishing trips? Certainly he remembered Jack-O-Lanterns for a few years. And being lifted high in someone's brawny hands to place the star at the top of that Christmas tree.

He hoped these faint recollections were not the only good moments. And he hoped that there would be many more good moments for this child, Steven.

For _his_ child, too, if he could make it so.

He passed a hand across his eyes, brushing away drops of perspiration and a camouflaged tear. Shaw caught the movement, of course, and he braced for a peppery taunt.

But her voice was soft, even melancholic, when she spoke at last.

"Nobody can guarantee good parents, not even Finch."

She tilted her chin towards the mother who had resumed her spot on the shady bench.

"But she and her husband look a hell of a lot better than what either one of us had growing up."

Shaw narrowed her eyes into a hard look, daring him to say anything about that particular confidence.

Maybe she knew about his home life, his mother. Or maybe she was just guessing. It didn't take much imagination to figure out that most people who became government-sanctioned assassins didn't grow up in happy families.

"Yeah."

Reese knew the sharing was over and that the topic should be dropped before its sulfur burned them both.

After an hour, the mother collected her son for the walk home. The boy tugged a bit on her hand and dragged his feet as they approached the iron gate, kicking up dust whorls in the gravel path. But Reese was glad that Steven didn't complain out loud, surely confident that this wasn't the last visit to the playground.

When the little family had disappeared down the street, Shaw stretched her arms above her head and stood from the bench.

"You can tell Finch I showed them to you, if you want."

She raised her chin in defiance, the sun flaring behind her head as he looked up at her.

"Like I said, secrets are bullshit."

She slipped away before the "Thank you" made it out of his mouth and he doubted she heard it.


	6. August -- Approach

The red-cheeked waitress minced across the bars of sunlight on the floor of the dumpy little café as if the August heat would scald her toes even through the corrugated soles of her shoes.

Late morning air, thick as honey, congealed around the few patrons still slumped at the counter, their forks raised over plates of hard scrambled eggs or hockey puck pancakes.

Reese watched the woman's agile dance across the blazing checkerboard, bracing for her return to his booth. The first time she had asked for his order he had shook her off, but now he needed to make a choice.

"Hon, you gonna just decorate the joint? Or you wanna actually eat something too?"

Her leisurely survey of his body suggested she might be willing to let him get away with just a glass of water, if he would put out a smile. But he wasn't in the mood for even minimal flirtation.

"Coffee, please. I'm waiting for someone."

"Sure thing, hon. Right back."

When she returned, she looked hard at the empty bench opposite him, then raised her eyebrows with the skepticism of long experience.

"You wanna mug or the whole pitcher?"

"The cup is fine, thanks."

She ignored him and parked the thermal carafe in the middle of the table after pouring out the first cupful.

He was grateful for her patience, something he had in short supply. He never liked waiting; although he was good at it, a seasoned practitioner of the arts of observation and delay. But he hated not being sure of the outcome of this vigil.

The meeting was Carter's idea.

In the two weeks prior, they had spoken several times on the phone, always strictly business. Twice they had met with Fusco present to review files lifted from the precinct. And once Finch had chaperoned a quick stand-up meeting in a bookstore where the three had strategized a stake out.

But this was the first time they had seen each other without an intermediary.

The prospect of meeting Carter now made him anxious, his stomach fluttering as if this was a first date with a high school crush.

He had chosen the booth toward the back of the café because it gave him a view of the entrance and all the patrons. He could even watch the bobbing head of the cook as he scooted back and forth within the frame of the oblong window separating the kitchen from the dining room.

He wasn't sure if Carter would show or not.

Last night her invitation had sounded firm enough, like she genuinely wanted to see him. But now he fretted that she might reconsider in the light of the new day. He slipped a hand inside his breast pocket to touch his cell, then pulled the phone out to study its bland face. He wanted to make sure she could call to cancel if she decided against seeing him.

As the minutes ticked by, that unhappy prospect grew more and more likely.

He knew she didn't need to see him to share information about their latest case; just updating him over the phone would do. Maybe she didn't want to break away from her desk to seek him out. Maybe a new investigation required her presence at a crime scene and she couldn't dodge her colleagues long enough to come to him.

Maybe she just didn't want to meet him at all.

"Looks like you could use a few more of these."

The stealthy waitress plunked down a stack of napkins in front of him.

He looked at the napkin in his hand. Tormented and torn, the paper had disintegrated into a mangled wad in his restless fingers. He crumpled the twisted cone inside his fist and thrust both hands below the table top. He kept his eyes fixed on the plumes of steam snaking above the coffee mug as the waitress shook the carafe to check its contents.

If Joss was reluctant to see him, he could understand.

He was hardly the man any smart woman would choose to father her baby: he had lied, tortured, seduced, and destroyed many times in his career. He had killed for good causes and bad ones. And he would kill again, his life as warped and soiled as this napkin in his hand.

A walking dead man, his unmarked grave was already excavated and awaiting his arrival.

Only an insane woman would want him, and Joss was blessedly sane and sensible; an honorable woman trapped in a nightmarish snare he had woven.

If she did come for this breakfast, he wanted his greeting to be casual and confident, an opening line that would set her at ease; he practiced the banal words silently so that they would roll out without a pause or stutter.

If she came.

Sunk so deep into the mire of these recriminations, he missed Carter's entrance into the café.

When he looked up, she was glancing around the cafe, searching for him. His heart vaulted as adrenaline shot through him, tightening his throat and forcing mist to his eyes. With the sodden napkin, he wiped drops of sweat from his upper lip, just as she spotted him. She didn't smile, only nodded her head as she walked down the aisle to him.

Trapped in the narrow passage with a plate of toast clutched in one hand, his ally the waitress stepped back to make way for Carter's passage, catching his eye to deliver an approving tilt of the chin.

As Carter advanced toward him, he couldn't stop staring.

Her heart-shaped face gleamed a warm brown despite the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. She had pulled her hair into a high ponytail because of the heat and her exposed throat's soft skin enchanted him. She wasn't wearing any make up that he could detect, but as she touched her tongue to her lips they glinted with a rosy shine. Her eyelids were shiny too, flickering under arched brows as her glowing eyes searched his face.

He recognized the black vest she wore as a familiar accessory. But this time it was unbuttoned and her white shirt was untucked too. She didn't seem sloppy to him, but the disarray was uncharacteristic. He couldn't tell if she wore a belt, but her light gray trousers were loosely draped, a concession to her blooming figure.

She was lush. Her ripe breasts strained the buttons of her shirt, the fullness of her stomach clearly visible as she neared the booth. Even her walk was different from when they had met in the bookstore: her gait was rolling now, her luxurious hips swaying to accommodate a lowering center of balance.

Blood pounded in his ears as warring emotions contended within him during the seconds it took her to reach his position: he thought she was more beautiful than ever and he felt proud that he was the cause of these gorgeous changes in her body. At the same time shame clenched at his gut and he suddenly wished that he was anywhere but here.

With neither emotion the outright winner, his speech took a hit and he forgot every word of greeting he had rehearsed for this moment.

"Joss, you…, um, I mean…"

"Yeah, I made it. Sorry I'm late. The captain got a bug up his ass at the last minute and I had to walk him through the details of the Diaz shooting one more time."

Still not smiling exactly, her lips slid into a sardonic curve that sent his stomach flipping.

Before he could speak, the waitress arrived with the saucer of toast triangles, shoving it in front of him without ceremony. Then, her red cheeks flaming, she pivoted toward Carter, plunking an empty mug on the table.

"Hot enough for ya, hon?"

Tilting her head toward Reese, she lowered her voice to a roaring whisper.

"He's been shy about breakfast so far - toast is on the house, by the way. But maybe now that you're here you can crank up the old appetite. So waddaya say?"

Reese was taken aback by this leak from his confederate; a waitress was supposed to be as closed mouthed about revelations as a bartender. He ducked his eyes, not wanting to see how Carter took this information. He was sure she was going to wave off the breakfast order and stick with her usual black coffee.

But then she surprised him.

She smiled for the first time that morning and without looking at the menu asked for two eggs, scrambled firm, and three sausage links with a side of hash browns. It seemed that what he had been reading about the pregnancy arc was true: she was feeling better now that she had made it past the first trimester.

When the waitress skipped away, Carter laid a thin manila folder on the table next to the coffee carafe.

Without preamble, she launched into the case they were working on, her voice easy and light.

"Got some intel on your guy. Looks like he's in over his head with his friends."

She pushed the file across the table towards him.

"Thanks, Carter."

He didn't open the file, just tented his left hand over it. At the same time he pushed the plate of free toast across the space to her.

There was no butter on the table, and he watched her recalibrate her taste to accept that these mini servings of pre-packaged jam were the best she was going to get this morning.

So he reached for the stack of little plastic tubs at the same time she did and their fingers collided. Her skin felt warm and her touch was soothing.

He wanted to take her hand then and press her fingers in his, but she chuffed a laugh and drew back. So to cover his fumble, he lined up several of the tiny containers in front of her: strawberry and blueberry and orange marmalade alternating in an impressive row punctuated by a lone tub of honey.

She arched her eyebrows at this offering and chose strawberry, smearing a thick gob over the first slice. She took large bites from two corners of the triangle, then spoke around the mouthful.

"Looks like that gimcrack money-laundering stunt didn't sit so well with the kind of low-lifes your guy runs with."

This banter was familiar, a welcome return to their peculiar kind of normal that he had missed during these months of distance.

"Maybe, but death is a pretty stiff penalty for stupid."

Talking about the case allowed him room to exhale. He could feel the sweat cooling on his palms and he thought they were dry enough to grip the mug without slipping, so he took a sip of coffee.

"Yeah, you got a point." She nodded and snipped off another bite from the toast.

Her eyes crinkled in what he took as a friendly way and she flicked out her tongue to catch a dollop of jam at the corner of her mouth.

He didn't know if she wanted to keep this conversation cool and impersonal like this; he couldn't read her intentions through the fog of his own emotions. So he thought it best to just lean back a bit and let her lead. If she wanted to just talk cases and evidence, he could do that right now. Just watching her talk was enough for now.

And watching her eat with such gusto was more than he had hoped for.

She tucked away the eggs and sausage in quick order, gulping long draughts from a glass of milk the waitress had provided unasked.

This evidence of her increased appetite made his stomach churn in sympathy over its paltry portion of black coffee; it was as if her healthy craving was a gift to him, a glimpse into her everyday life and its changing story line of desires.

When she paused to set down her fork and knife, he put both hands on the table again.

"Joss, I…" His instinct was to brush his fingers against hers another time. Instead, he folded his hands together for a moment.

"You can tell me things about the pregnancy, if you want."

He wanted to say, _I miss you_. But he feared she would take that declaration as a blunt intrusion, a simple request for sex, when what he wanted was so much more than that. He wanted her to talk with him, share with him, see him, get him.

So because he couldn't say all those things, he pushed his fingertips together in a steeple whose peak pointed toward her.

"If it matters to you, I want to know."

The expressions flitting across her face were distinct but their meaning was uncertain. He couldn't tell what she was thinking, or whether she was even thinking about him at all in that moment.

He was reluctant to say too much, but he couldn't risk letting her misunderstand his intentions.

"I'd rather have it hurt, than be left out altogether."

He winced inside as the stark sentence hung between them, swinging like a garish signboard pointing in both directions.

She latched onto the one word in that phrase that he regretted saying.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, you know."

"I know you didn't."

He wanted to take back the implied accusation. But as he gathered his breath to continue, she surged ahead with her explanation.

"I asked Harold to check on adoptive parents, because …well, because it seemed like he would know how to do it best."

"Yeah, he's good at digging up things, putting things together."

He understood that by asking his friend for help, she was sure Finch would pass along any news without delay. She had meant to keep him in the loop, if only indirectly. But still he felt, if not discarded, at least sidelined. And he was afraid that if she kept shutting him out, he would lose her for good.

It was going to hurt like hell when their baby was in someone else's arms, that much he knew. But if in the process he lost Joss as well… the anxiety knotted into a painful lump in his stomach and he crouched forward to ease the pressure.

As if in response to his movement, she spoke:

"This isn't simple, is it?"

She shook her head at the understatement and quirked up a corner of her mouth. Her eyes focused on his lips, as if willing him to smile in imitation of her gesture.

He couldn't smile, not right then, and so he covered up by taking a new sip from the tepid coffee.

She sighed, just a tiny whiff of regret jostling the space between them as they fell silent.

At that moment he was filled with such longing, not for her body or her laughter, not even for her approval or her understanding.

Right then, he wished with all his heart that he could have seen her pregnant the first time around. He wondered if she had carried the weight differently seventeen years ago, if her breasts had been this plush before, if her skin had glowed in this special way back then.

Had she been happy to have a baby then, in a marriage, even a shaky one? Had juggling a job and a man and an infant seemed impossible to her then, or had the buoyant energy of youth convinced her she could handle it all?

He thought she was a good mother, Taylor seemed grounded and thriving from what little he had seen.

But so much in her life remained undefined for him; her dreams were opaque, her thoughts vaguely outlined.

Had she wanted more children? Another marriage? Had she imagined a very different story for herself than this troubled one he was leading her towards? Adoption was a choice she had considered carefully, he was sure. A path not lightly taken. But if adoption seemed the best option to her now, did giving him up too seem the only safe alternative open to her?

His melancholy mood swept over the booth, as clouds now dimmed the bars of sunlight slanting across the café floor.

He answered her at last:

"No, it's not simple at all."

After a long, dry time evaporated, she spoke again.

"Can I tell you something?"

She sounded cautious as if she were afraid of sharing too much.

"Yes, always."

"I felt it move. Last week, for the first time. I felt it, little flickerings like a bird's wing."

She fluttered her fingers above the fork, touching each tine with elaborate care.

"Now?"

He extended his hand across the table towards her.

"No, not this morning. But I wanted to tell you anyway. So you'd know."

She stretched out her fingers and grazed the creases over his knuckles. He couldn't suppress the trembling then and he raised his hand a bit so she could feel the tremors.

"Thank you, Joss."

It was a start, tentative and delicate, the steps halting and unsteady in the gusts that buffeted them.

But it was an opening all the same.

He would take it.


	7. September -- Orbit

"How are we feeling today, Mrs. Carter?"

Carter took the use of the wrong title as a tip-off that the obstetrician's question was rhetorical, so she felt justified in giving a minimal answer.

And even though the ugly coral walls in the outer waiting room had brought on a brief bout of nausea, her first in more than two months, Carter felt it was O.K. to evade the truth a bit.

"Fine. Better now that the weather has changed."

Brusque September had indeed brought welcome bursts of crispness.

The soggy days when she had to change her shirt twice before dinner were now less frequent. And she enjoyed those blustery mornings and fresh nights when slipping on a pair of thick socks was a coddling treat.

"No more swollen ankles?"

Dr. Robbins heaved her teak-colored rope of a braid to one side as she tightened the blood pressure cuff around Carter's right biceps. The doctor was short and round, so tucking her button-down shirt into khaki slacks did not give her much of a waist, despite the efforts of the narrow orange patent leather belt which strained at its task.

Carter liked Robbins' no-nonsense air and she appreciated the fact that the doctor took the time for the small but telling gesture of personally taking her blood pressure rather than leaving the task to an assistant. She felt the occasional patronizing line was a small price to pay for competence and efficiency.

"Not for the last three weeks."

"Good. That's what we like to hear."

Her legs dangling off the end of the examination table made Carter feel like a child sitting at the grown-ups' table at Thanksgiving, invited, but still out of place. She shifted to angle her body toward the doctor, causing the sanitary paper on the table to crackle and hiss under her weight.

Carter thought Dr. Robbins took special glee in pumping the cuff to its maximum inflation; the vague smile that played across the older woman's face intensified the discomfort and throbbing in her arm.

Slowly counting the pockmarks in the ceiling tiles was a proven way to calm the nerves that always surged through her at the beginning of these checkups.

They might be called routine, but for Carter each visit to the doctor's office launched new ripples of doubt and anxiety.

Options clicked through her mind now with daunting speed: Have this baby. Keep this baby. Give it away. Keep John. Set him aside too. Follow her calling as a law officer. Traffic with criminals. Reaffirm her oath of office. Blur its rigid lines even more. Drive headlong for career advancement. Abandon her ambition before its peak. Disappoint her mother. Gratify her son.

An infinite array of combinations confronted her as this Rubik's Cube of options tumbled through her mind. Bright or dire, hopeful or desolate, the jumble of unresolved choices plucked at her nerves until she felt sure her skin was jumping under the doctor's firm grip.

She didn't know if Dr. Robbins could hear her heart pounding through the stethoscope. But Carter needed a respite, a moment of calm, to quell her worries and soothe her surging blood.

So she counted thirty-three of the black freckles on the ceiling before she felt the cuff's grip subside.

"110 over 75. Right where we like to see it."

Robbins sounded smug, as if the lowered blood pressure was her own achievement.

"What's normal supposed to be for me now?"

If Robbins was going to use the overly-familiar "we," then Carter felt justified in pushing for more technical details.

"I like to see readings lower than 115 over 75. Some doctors will consider a normal blood pressure reading of below 120 over 80 to be acceptable. But I like to see that a bit lower, just to be on the cautious side."

Carter frowned and felt a petulant pout blooming on her mouth.

"I didn't have any high blood pressure problems with my first pregnancy."

Robbins slowed down her speech, drawling out her explanation in a way that made Carter feel the Thanksgiving dinner inadequacy even more forcefully.

"I know that, Joss, but that was seventeen years ago, right? And you're what, forty-two, now? So, as I said, I prefer to see the reading on the lower side."

"I'm an elderly mom now, is that it?" Carter snickered and added, "That's certainly how my son would see it!"

The doctor took up the lighter tone and laughed too.

"Right. 'Elderly _primipara_.' I always hated that term. Makes it sound like we're all ancient history, you know, Etruscan artifacts or leathery pterodactyls, doesn't it?"

Dr. Robbins tucked away the pressure cuff and unfurled the stethoscope from around her neck.

"Breathe deeply."

She pressed the cool nose of the instrument against Carter's sternum and then under her left breast. With a soft uncalloused hand, the doctor pushed her forward as she maneuvered around to the back.

"Again. Deeper."

Silence for a few moments of calculation, but no more numbers were forthcoming. Dr. Robbins just said "Unh-uh" to herself softly which Carter interpreted as a positive sound.

"You're on desk duty, aren't you? They've reassigned you off of patrols by now, haven't they?"

"Yeah, I started riding the desk about two weeks ago."

"Less dangerous, I hope?"

"The biggest danger I'm in now is concussion from my head hitting the desk if I fall asleep on the job."

Walking toward the door, the doctor chuckled again:

"Well, boring isn't always bad. And who knows, maybe you can stockpile that sleep for all those nights after the baby comes. You'll need it then, that's for sure."

Carter shifted on the examination table, the crisp sounds of the tissue paper raking across her mind.

She wanted to revisit the conversation about going for a vaginal birth this time around. She knew Robbins was against it, but she plunged ahead with the first salvo anyway.

"Can we talk about the VBAC one more time? I'm still interested in trying it, you know."

"Sure, we can talk about it again, Joss. But here's the thing, you haven't gotten any younger since the last time we looked into this and that's a big factor in this decision."

Carter rolled her eyes and offered a rueful smile.

"That elderly _primapara_ thing, right?"

"Right. And as I mentioned before, your classical caesarean incision - vertical rather than low and horizontal - puts you at a much higher risk for uterine rupture during labor this time."

Carter ran her hand along the horizontal scar across her stomach. She knew from Robbins's review of Taylor's delivery that the outside scar didn't match the one on her uterus.

"Yeah, I know. I just feel… I don't know. Inadequate or incompetent somehow."

And she knew, without Robbins mentioning it again, that the web of gnarled scar tissue from her IED wound was the most decisive indicator that her body was not suited to take on the hard work of a vaginal birth.

She felt betrayed by her history, by her military service and by her sacrifice. But worse, she felt like she was betraying too. She owed this baby the chance for a normal birth, an ordinary entry into this world where the challenges would always loom high. Somehow, resorting to another caesarean seemed like giving up on the child before it even arrived.

A sniff escaped and she passed the back of her hand over her nose to capture it.

"Hey look, Joss."

Closing the distance between them, the doctor pressed a plump hand on her thigh.

"Your baby deserves the best possible start. And that means you need to be the healthiest mom you can be, from day one and for all the years ahead. OK?"

"Yeah. OK."

She hadn't told Robbins about her plans to give up the baby for adoption yet.

Looking at it dispassionately, she knew the doctor might be in a good position to help with practical suggestions about legal matters and leads on adoption agencies. But turning her into an ally or confidante wasn't a step Carter wanted to take just now. The thought brought another wave of waiting-room nausea and she looked toward the speckled ceiling again to quell the unease roiling her stomach.

A hand on the doorknob, Dr. Robbins tossed out a final comment:

"Marisol's expecting you in the exam room for the sonogram."

Then a toothy smile: "Remember to let her know if you don't want to find out the sex of the baby."

POIPOIPOI

The ultrasound technician, Marisol Gutiérrez, was of Afro-Caribbean descent Carter guessed, with a musicality in her accent that suggested somewhere beyond the islands, maybe coastal Venezuela or Colombia. Her poreless almond skin made it hard to determine age, but Carter thought late-twenties fit with the trim waist, vigorous corona of black curls, and unblemished hands.

As she leaned back on the big reclining chair, Carter was reminded by its padded contours that she ought to schedule a dentist's appointment for Taylor; due to her many distractions and his reluctance, he hadn't had a check-up in over a year. If she wasn't going to be taking on the care of this new baby, she fretted, the least she could do was be a more dutiful mother to the child she already had.

The sonogram room was large and chilly, painted a pale yellow which suited her queasy stomach better than the noxious coral of the waiting room.

A breeze swept over exposed skin as she raised her shirt, hooked her thumbs in the elastic waistband of her trousers and pushed it toward her lap. Awkward and prone, Carter felt for the first time that her stomach was truly huge, a globe bisected by a dark meridian stripe stretching from breastbone to pubis.

The air conditioner's arctic humming formed a steady counterpoint to Marisol's tropical monologue.

"Are we feeling fine today, Mrs. Carter? You look well, that second trimester glow is full upon you, I can see. With that smooth complexion, it's make-up optional for you now, right?"

Although the sentence might have ended in a question mark, without the upward rise in tone, Carter figured she wasn't required to answer. And then Marisol plunged along without a prompt, indicating the guess was correct.

"And the hair so shiny and strong, the nails bursting forth, every part of you just seems to flourish like flowers in a well-watered garden, isn't it?"

After dimming the lights, Marisol continued her prattle, the step-by-step narration of her actions seemed to be designed to reassure or at least distract.

"Will anyone be joining you today, Mrs. Carter?"

Though the young woman barely paused to allow for an answer, at Carter's silence a tiny frown flickered across her brow. The creamy skin rippled for an instant – whether registering surprise or sorrow wasn't certain - then smoothed again into its professionally tranquil mask.

"If not, we can get underway and have you back at work in no time."

Carter noted that the technician's lips were full, with a soft hazelnut color whose lack of pink or red tones made them disappear into her face when not in motion. Her nose was gently snubbed, gilded freckles splashed over the bridge. Despite the chilly air, a glint of perspiration there made Carter wonder if Marisol felt under some kind of pressure to perform during these exams.

"This is the time to let me know if you want photos or a CD of the baby to take home. The machine makes them automatically so it's no trouble at all. Just let me know and I'll snap away."

Her trilling laugh washed over them as Marisol wriggled delicate tan fingers in the air to show how easy the whole process was.

This time Carter did get a word in:

"No, that's alright. I won't need any photos today, thanks."

"Oh, that's fine then, Mommy, fine indeed. And now for the most important question of all: Do you want to know the sex of your baby? You have to let me know now so, if you don't, I can tell you when to close your eyes to keep the little parts a secret."

Another laugh, bright and silvery as she flipped the cap on a bottle of transmission gel.

Carter nodded and looked toward the monitor mounted on the wall to her left.

"Yes, I want to know. I want to see."

"Right you are, then. You can stop off at the hardware store to pick up that can of pink or blue paint for the nursery on your way back to the office."

More smiles, teeth framed starkly by the burnished cheeks.

"And away we go!"

Marisol squirted gel in a figure eight pattern onto the right side of Carter's swollen stomach. A dribble caught in the ragged skin over her broad battle scar, but the technician seemed not to notice.

"This should be warm, but let me know if it's too cool for you. Now for the transducer. Or my magic wand, as I like to call it!"

She held up the device with a flourish, inviting admiration, even though it seemed a rather simple white plastic stick.

Marisol pushed the probe gently across taut skin, pressing and poking as she worked from one hemisphere to the next. Carter forgot to watch the monitor, so entranced was she by the image of caramel fingers sliding over her own brown body.

Marisol's was just the shade of skin her baby would have.

A tender tone like a fawn's protective coloration, with golden accents of honey and rose.

John's baby.

Their baby. Skin tinted amber by their joined blood, swathed forever in sunlight.

She wanted to see their baby, touch the soft spot on the top of its head, stroke her finger over the tiny whorls of its ear, and trace the threads of fine hair above its eyes.

She wanted to know their baby's bright caramel face.

"Ah, there's the little foot, see it! And the knee bends right here, see!"

Marisol's exclamation called her out of the reverie.

With considerable squinting and lots of faith in the younger woman's navigational skills, over the next fifteen minutes Carter was able to discern legs, hands, and an elegantly-curved rump.

The head's outline easily emerged from the fuzzy image, taking Carter's breath away with its bold profile and confident mass. But to her untrained eye, everything else remained as ill-defined as cotton balls floating across a cloudy sky.

Marisol's narration of the tour slowed to halting monosyllables as she wrote down the measurements of spine, thigh, skull, and major organs.

Then suddenly, a sentence burst out:

"Right here, look! We can see the four chambers of the heart, pumping away like a tiny engine. Beautiful, isn't it?"

Carter puffed out a yes, although she couldn't see anything more than a throbbing light where the technician indicated.

At several points Marisol paused, leaned forward toward the monitor on her computer and mumbled under her breath. Carter's own breath hitched at what she feared might be confusion, stress, or concern.

After several minutes of this silent concentration, she blurted, "Is there something wrong?"

Marisol's face split into a dazzling grin.

"Oh, don't mind me, Mommy! I just get exasperated when the baby moves so much. And your little one moves a lot! It's hard to get accurate measurements and clear pictures when it's a track star like yours. You've got a real dynamo there, for sure!"

A few more scribbled notes accompanied by a sigh indicated Marisol was satisfied at last with her documentation.

"Now let's get to the big story, shall we? Shift to your left just a bit so I can get a better view and we'll know exactly what kind of little champion we have here."

Carter moved as instructed.

"There! You can see it, can't you?"

The fuzzy image swirled but revealed nothing in particular.

"A girl, Mrs. Carter! A beautiful little girl!"

Carter tried to contain the gasp and the tears, but couldn't prevent either from bursting forth.

Smiles wreathed the technician's sunny face as she snatched several tissues from a box near the keyboard.

"Here you go. Some for your cheeks and some more for your stomach. You can wipe off the gel now."

Carter dabbed at her mouth and nose to catch the runny mess.

"And is everything O.K.? I mean, is my baby – is _she_ \- alright?"

"Everything looks great overall. This afternoon I'll send the report and pictures to Dr. Robbins who will be the one to sign off on the results, of course. But from where I sit everything looks wonderful."

Marisol patted her arm as she gathered the damp tissues, discarding them with an expert arcing shot to the waste basket under the wall monitor.

"Another twenty weeks to go, Mommy, and you'll take home your beautiful baby girl."

Despite the assumptions, or maybe because of them, Carter nodded, optimism and relief elbowing aside anxiety for the first time that day. She pulled up the stretch waistband of her slacks and stroked the tails of her shirt over her stomach in a mindful rhythm. Smoothing away invisible wrinkles, soothing her little girl and herself at the same time.

Skillful, kind-hearted Marisol, with her prattling suppositions and her glorious golden skin, was a harbinger, a sign of something yet to be discovered.

That daunting Rubik's Cube of options shifted once again, its tumblers falling into a new and more reassuring pattern this time.


	8. September -- Approach Speed

"No pictures?"

Disapproval – or was it disappointment? - vibrated off Cecelia Griffin's face in rough waves that threatened to capsize her daughter.

"Yes, Mama, like I said. I didn't ask the technician to make any pictures because I didn't think anyone would want to see them."

Carter cringed at how chilly that explanation sounded as it came out. Was she really so indifferent to her baby or just to her mother? To Taylor too? Or just to John?

Celia didn't miss a beat, reading minds being her well-honed specialty.

"You think I wouldn't be interested in seeing those fancy three-D scans of my baby?"

" _My_ baby, not yours, Mama."

"Yes, alright. _Your_ baby. But _my_ granddaughter. My first granddaughter. And the only one I'm likely to ever have at this rate. So, yes. I _would_ have wanted to see those pictures."

Carter watched as vertical lines between her mother's glossy brown eyes winked and stretched in an accustomed pattern: definitely this was disappointment registering on these familiar features now.

With weathered hands, Celia smoothed the hem of her lime green blouse over her thighs. The white slacks she wore were cropped several inches above the ankle, giving no concession to either the fall season or the dropping temperatures. At sixty-nine, Cecelia Griffin's sumptuous curves still commanded admiration and the white polka-dots flung across her tropical shirt proclaimed that she used her body as she wished, convention and fashion be damned.

Buttoned up and meek was not her mother's style. Celia didn't see the need to disguise her figure or her feelings, an approach her daughter appreciated but never quite managed to apply to herself.

Carter sighed at this impasse and lifted the mug of chamomile tea in front of her own face as a kind of dam to prevent sharper words from escaping her mouth.

"O.K. Next time I get an ultrasound, I'll bring you along and you can order as many photos as you want."

She almost added, _Knock yourself out, Mama. Fill up a whole picture album if you want._ But the grassy taste of chamomile filled her mouth instead of those sarcastic phrases and she let the feeling go with another sigh.

Her mother seemed to let it go too.

"You're looking good, Jossy. You got that bounce back in your step now, even though you're getting pretty big. And your skin is like glass, it's so smooth and fine."

A smile ran across Celia's full mouth, curling up one corner as she tilted her head to the left.

Although they were seated at the square table in Carter's kitchen, she felt as if once again her mother had somehow claimed these domestic precincts as her own territory. Celia's energy, her piercing intellect, even the crisp citrusy fumes of her scent filled up every corner.

"You feeling alright these days?" The maternal concern was genuine, Carter knew, and she felt cosseted in its warm embrace. "Sleeping O.K.?"

"Yes, fine."

The skimpy rote answer inspired a skeptical look, so Carter expanded.

"I'm doing better, Mama. The doctor liked my blood pressure and my weight gain was right on track, she said."

As if endorsing that last bit of news, Celia pushed the saucer of soft molasses cookies from the middle of the table. Carter took the peace offering and let the sweet sticky crumbs settle on her tongue as her mother stood from the table and gathered her thoughts for another line of conversation.

"Now, where'd that colander go?"

Celia seemed to be talking to herself as she rummaged behind several lower cabinet doors until she found the utensil and wrestled it from its tangled nest.

"You start snapping these string beans so we can get dinner on the stove before Taylor gets home from practice."

Matching actions to her words, Celia plopped a giant plastic sack of beans in front of her daughter and rotated her left hand in the universal gesture meaning _hurry up_.

"You think you have enough string beans for the three of us, Mama?" Carter laughed at the vegetable mountain on the table.

"I always like to be prepared."

Celia drawled the last word.

"You never know who else might turn up, right?"

She paused in her unwrapping of the pork chops to give Carter a long look.

"No, Mama. No one else is turning up tonight."

Carter returned the look for a moment, then dropped her eyes and seized an innocent bean.

"No one. Period."

Snapping the ends off with undue force didn't relieve the tension completely and Carter knew her silence wasn't going to derail the conversation her mother seemed determined to pursue.

"So is it you? Or him? Or the both of you together?"

"Both of us together what?"

Carter chose to be dense and let her mother say what was on her mind without help.

"Both of you together deciding to not talk about this - this whatever it is you two got going on. About this baby girl and how you both're going to bring her into this world."

"We talk about it. Sometimes. He knows I'm for adoption."

Celia placed the unopened package of chops in the frying pan and turned her back to the stove.

"And is that what he wants too? Or this just you flying solo again like you do?"

Carter thought back to the intense snatches of conversation that had led her and John to that shaky agreement.

"He said if adoption seemed the best way to go, then he would back me up, whatever I decided."

These talks had been one sided and halting, as their exchanges often were when matters turned personal.

She had told John about Finch's investigations, the lists of adoption agencies and go-between attorneys ready to cut a private deal. She had spoken about scanning the files of potential parents: dry stacks of resumes, financial records, medical reports, diplomas, grainy photos clipped to weepy application letters.

Between the facts and numbers, she had let little drops of her fear ooze out, those doubts that stained her reasoning. Without meaning to, she had let him glimpse the insecurities shimmering beneath the placid surface of her convictions.

In these talks, John was a portrait of silent concentration: head tilted to one side, soft eyes trained on her mouth, breathing stifled as if the slightest rustle would blow away some important word and scatter the meaning of her sentences.

Occasionally his dark-lashed lids would flutter as if absorbing a painful blow, then fly open again to take in another phrase. Even in the public spaces where they always met - a park, a sleek café, or poky bar - tears would sometimes hover in his eyes when her words ran too rough. And as he blinked, russet would seep across the high planes of his cheekbones, hinting at turbulence suppressed.

In those tender moments, when his moist mouth opened to her and he swallowed repeatedly to choke down a plea, she almost relented, almost gave into his vulnerability and her need.

"And you think he really meant it?"

Though Celia's quiet words drew her from the melancholy trance, its emotional tide flooded through her response:

"He's a good man, Mama. He meant it."

She knew it then: she wanted him. That desire surged through her now, as strong and certain as anything she had ever believed.

Maybe not this golden daughter they had created. Maybe not the tame coupled life that danced like a phantom just beyond their grasp. Maybe all those ethereal dreams must slip away even as she reached for them.

But if she could have him - for now if not forever - she hoped she could finally hold that elusive completeness that had taunted her all her life.

Two hot tears slid down her cheeks and splashed onto the pile of clipped green beans before her. She gasped, but didn't want to say more for fear of unraveling altogether.

Celia's voice washed soothing and cool through the little kitchen then:

"If you believe it, baby, then I know it's true."

A heavy arm across her daughter's back, a squeeze to the shoulder as she leaned in close.

"You're carrying a plenty big burden as it is right now. Trying to fix the world. Fix him too, I guess. But that's not your job now."

Warm breath carried the fragrance of molasses and ginger wafting across her cheek where a kiss sealed the sweet embrace.

"You don't have to set it down, Joss. But sharing that burden'll make it lighter as you go along."

"I'll try, Mama. If I can, I'll try."

Celia patted her daughter's cheek, then stroked a thumb beside her mouth to smear the tears running there.

"That's all you have to do. Try."

In the close silence of the kitchen, the two women pressed their heads together for a long moment.

Then the mother straightened and took a step back toward the stove. Wrestling with the plastic wrapping, she finally freed the pork chops and dropped them on a plate beside the burners.

"Now where'd that salt get to?"

She flung open the doors to all the upper cabinets in quick succession.

"I don't see how you keep the salt in a different cupboard from the pepper. It just don't make any sense at all!"


	9. November -- New Horizons

This was certainly a bad idea.

But it felt like such an awfully good one. So she lifted her fist and pounded again.

When he pulled back the door to stop her knocking, John's apartment looked the same as it had during her last visit that spring interlude so long ago.

 _And throughout that furtive winter evening when this all began._

As she scanned the space beyond his barricading shoulders, everything seemed as usual. Nothing had changed, except everything about them was different now.

She could see the expected leather couch, the skinny floor lamps unlit, wooden chairs crowding the bare dining table, two books and a magazine scattered on the glass coffee table next to a tumbler with amber dregs pooling in the bottom.

The sun had just set; through those ghastly unclothed windows she could see its port wine stain sliding between the Manhattan towers, throwing splashes of early November purple and ruby across the apartment's floor.

She must have interrupted his solitary dinner if the spoon propped in a casserole dish near the sink was evidence. She didn't care if he was still hungry for whatever his concoction was – Parmesan seething in a cream sauce over salty broccoli? Basil-flecked cherry tomatoes clinging to slippery pasta?

She was hungry too. She wanted to taste those flavors on his tongue.

Now.

He seemed hesitant to let her in at first, his naked toes touching to form a miniature barrier before he stepped back and she crossed the threshold.

Like the furniture, his clothing seemed the same; black trousers belted over a white dress shirt, pristine cuffs rolled back to reveal delicate wrists. The shirt's open collar was still crisp, immaculate after a day's bloody peril and grime. She wanted to smell the collar's starch, careful ironing's smoky scent, and the hint of bleach on his throat.

Now.

These flares of raw desire had scorched her for several weeks, random blue flames dancing across her skin at the most inconvenient times: tapping on the keyboard as she entered scanty data from a rookie's field report. Scooping vanilla ice cream into a foaming glass of root beer for Taylor's homework -incentive float. Snipping coupons for groceries she might never buy. Idling in the cosmetics aisle as her mother picked a new shade of drugstore nail polish.

When the job was rote and her family's daily concerns occupied only half her attention, rogue images careened through her mind like missiles craving a target.

Again and again, thoughts of John – unruly, hot, and tingling with specificity - blazed her insides.

She pictured the phallic jut of the cowlick above his brow, the revelation of August-tanned skin glowing within the frame of the white shirt, the tease of black gabardine stretched over his ass when he slipped both hands into his trouser pockets. Ignited like this, the muscles straining over her swollen stomach clinched and pulsed under the flimsy fabric of her blouses. Twice, three times a day, sitting at her desk, her head down to avoid Fusco's prying eyes, dampness pooled between her breasts and thighs, the erotic onslaught so fierce that even the spaces behind her ears and the canal of her spine felt sticky with this infernal desire.

She told herself it was a bad idea to think about John this way, sending him sex signals was a notion she needed to squelch before they both got burned. On the periphery of her life he was safe; in the middle of it he was a walking apocalypse.

Polite - John was so polite - and appropriate too, with his soft eyes and whispered assurances. Always so damned attentive, even accommodating, long fingers flying close to but never touching her shoulder or elbow or palm while they talked about cases.

As if Finch's priggish manners had finally sunk in and transformed him into a model of vigilante etiquette. At just the wrong time.

Holding back, he was letting her lead. If he had wanted to drive her mad, this smirk-free reticence was the perfect strategy. But she knew he wasn't playing games, was sticking to the straight and true with her now and that insight fueled her frustration and fired up her longing.

Bad ideas had always exerted a magnetic pull on her imagination. For as long as she could remember, wicked hypotheses and untested provocations had drawn her into the boiling cauldron against her better instincts. The worse the idea, the wilder the dare, the more she wanted to plunge in.

And she wanted him.

Now.

"I've got mac-and-cheese. There's a little left if you're hungry."

John half-raised his arm and gestured toward the kitchen.

"Thanks, I'm good. I didn't mean to interrupt."

The casual lie flowed so smoothly it embarrassed her a bit. But if he doubted her, he let it slide.

"No interruption. Cleaning up left-overs is my regular Tuesday night hobby."

He laughed, easily she thought, and stepped closer to take her charcoal tent of an overcoat. He smelled good, like the remnants of a recently doused wood fire, green notes among the smoke. She wanted to get closer, but she wanted to keep the mood relaxed too.

"Weapons on Mondays, casseroles on Tuesdays? That it?"

She felt triumphant when he laughed again.

"Yes, something like that."

She moved over to the coffee table and picked up the short glass, swirling the amber liquid as she raised it to her face.

"Johnny Walker?"

 _That is what they had sampled the first time she had visited his apartment, when she knew she would fuck him and he knew it too: the dance of certainty that night was delicious as they pressed the inevitable forward by urgent stages._

"It's Knob Creek. And you shouldn't have any." He made to take the drink from her but she dodged out of reach.

Before he could stop her, she swallowed the bourbon in a single gulp.

"One sip won't hurt anybody."

Licking her lips, she tasted the burnt vanilla and cinnamon introduction and the dark brown sugar that followed. Dates, maybe liquorice, and something tangy like orange peel finished off the warm collaboration of flavors. So this was how his mouth tasted right now. She didn't need to kiss him just yet, this bourbon on her tongue would do fine for the time being.

"So why are you here, Joss? You've got booze at home, you don't need to steal mine."

He had dropped her coat on the leather sofa and turned to face her, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"You don't have intel on a case because Finch hasn't asked you for anything this week. And you aren't in any trouble because Fusco would have called me."

The abruptness of his question should have given her pause, but instead it spurred her on.

"Oh, I'm in trouble alright. _Big_ trouble. Trouble like you won't believe."

She wanted to sound sultry, like a vamp in an old movie, so she lowered her voice to a whisper and was gratified when he leaned forward to catch her soft words.

It was hard to move seductively with a giant balloon up your regulation uniform blouse and the elastic waistband of your pants slipping down around your pubic bone, but she managed to slink towards him until she was an arm's length away. The swaying of her stomach held his attention and she was pleased when his gaze slid up to the exposed curve of her breasts. The bourbon had warmed her and she fingered the top button of her shirt, lifting it to capture a slight breeze as she exhaled. She guessed he could feel the heat wafting from her body as their positions closed, but she regretted that the stiff fabric hid from his view the tightening of her nipples.

He stretched out both hands to hold her, but it was a protective gesture, she thought, too safe to be sexual. She wanted to invert that equation, quashing the innocence and ratcheting up the danger.

When she pulled back, she caught the dark shimmer of desire flash in his eyes at last. His jaw moved from side to side so that the stubble there glinted in the lamplight. She thought his mouth must be dry, because he swallowed hard before parting his lips.

"Joss, this isn't… I mean… I don't think…"

She placed a stiff index finger against his mouth and pressed.

"You don't have to think. This is my show. Let me lead."

She ran that admonishing finger under the curve of his bottom lip down his chin to the bobbling Adam's apple, keeping her touch light. As one by one she slipped the shirt buttons through their holes, she glimpsed a pink flicker of tongue moistening his open mouth.

 _He tried to keep his weight off of her, but the sensation of being squeezed between the sofa's slick skin and John's heated flesh was overwhelming. She felt full, good, bursting with need. Her breasts throbbed with the tension of this first encounter, her abraded nipples tingling in sympathy with the friction between her thighs. With the lights out, the moon was their only illumination, an icy lamp frosting their movements. Wanting and getting and wanting more was the pulse that drove her thrusts. She wanted to speak, to laugh and say yes, but all that came out were moans and sighs. His sounds were deep but breathy too, like he wanted to grunt or cry, but instead focused his energy on filling her again and again._

When she had pushed the shirt from his arms, she let it drop to the floor, the clatter of buttons sounding like fingernails against the wooden planks. His bronzed nipples were tense, rising and falling as irregular breaths shuddered through his chest. She knew what she wanted to see and what she wanted to do, but his understanding was less certain.

He raised his hand to unclasp the belt, but she pushed it away and attacked the buckle on her own. Her movements were confident and in a moment his trousers had slumped to his ankles. A firm grip at the waistband of his boxers pulled them down to join the puddled clothing. He was naked at last, his long pale feet buried in the clothes she had just stripped off.

"Step forward or you'll trip."

Perhaps she should have smiled then to make the moment seem more light-hearted; she thought she sounded too matter-of-fact or G.I., but he obeyed without question.

Despite the drift of cooling air across his body, the skin of his chest shone with a light film of perspiration. She stood directly in front of him, studying the curves of pectoral muscles, the dip toward the breast bone between them and the gentle indentations over his ribs. Focused on the scattering of chest hair, a few white curls among the black, she thought she could see individual strands spring to attention as his skin prickled with goose bumps. To her eyes, he looked broader through the trunk and stronger in the arms than when he was clothed.

His stomach trembled and sank below his ribs, the alluring grooves of the Adonis belt running from hip to pubic bone. Framed in this manner, the tightly clasped belly button seemed vulnerable and exposed. A straight trail of dark hair sprang below his navel in stark contrast to the pale skin of his stomach. She saw the jagged scar from Snow's sniper attack and cringed to remember her inadvertent role in that assault. Other scars, silvery with age, mapped a life spent on the perilous edge of violence.

Partially aroused, his cock twitched in its dark nest of coils and he shifted from one foot to the other as she watched.

Moving around to his left side, she studied the hard contours of his thighs and the powerful slope of his ass as it curved to meet his back. His stillness was beautiful, as was the balance and symmetry of his torso. She thought his shoulders relaxed as she continued moving around him, the arms lengthened and the hands flattened against his legs.

Her gaze swept up to the sharply tonsured point at the nape of his neck. She resisted stroking the black strands bristling at his hair line and discovered instead a minute collection of pock marks along his spine, remnants of a childhood disease perhaps. At that moment, John flexed his biceps, deliberately she thought, and the provocation worked: with a rush of emotion, she felt his physical authority and the thrilling paradox of his yielding that strength to her.

John was attractive; she had known this from the start, accepted it as an element in the calculus of their relationship. But now, beholding the raw fact of his body, its beauty confronted her in all its daunting power.

As she completed the tour, she returned to her starting place in front of him. He was panting, tension or lust brightening the whites of his eyes and drawing his mouth into a tight line. His erection, strong and complete now, lunged toward her with each beat of his heart.

 _As they lay sticky and satiated, she raised her leg to cradle his hips in hers. The leather couch was narrow, but their bodies were still joined, so the space was wide enough for now. He laid a heavy hand over her breast, then stroked upward to draw patterns on her throat, tapping a thumb against the point of her chin. He nuzzled her cheek and played the tip of his tongue against her nose. Because it was the first time, the frantic rage to just fuck had taken precedence over the gentler demands of foreplay. They hadn't kissed enough before, so this seemed like a good time to redress that. Now his mouth covered hers, sucking slowly at her bottom lip, then running his tongue against her teeth. He tasted like bourbon, smoky and sweet on her tongue. He was still hard inside her, quiet after the storm, but insistent and strong._

She'd thought about this: to make it work, she needed John below her. The bed in the main living space was so unprotected that on most occasions it made her feel nervous and vulnerable. The sleeping loft over the entrance was the cozier spot she preferred. But tonight, despite the gaping windows and high ceiling, this exposed space was where she wanted to be.

She led him to the bed and pushed on his shoulders until he first sat and then lay flat, his knees bent at the edge of the mattress so that his feet touched the floor.

With his legs spread wide she stood between them to undress, pulling off first her sagging trousers and panties and then the billowy shirt that covered her stomach. When she drew her bra over her head the elastic holding her pony-tail got tangled in it and her loosed hair fell around her shoulders. She felt unlovely and needy then; he had never seen her naked like this and she was sure her swollen body must shock, even repulse him.

But John sat up and reached his hands out to grasp her stomach, spreading his fingers wide on either side to measure its span. His eyes softened as he pressed his palms against her heated skin. A light smile ran over his lips and she thought she saw tears sparkle under his lowered lashes.

"This is beautiful, Joss. _You_ are so beautiful."

At that, he moved one hand to open her and his straining cock slid into her with ease and she was surprised at how comfortable it was to hover over him, her knees on either side of his torso.

Initial hesitation forgotten in the thrill of liquid contact, their pumping took on a leisurely pace, Joss slowly raising and lowering her body as she wanted, getting her fill of him.

"So good," she sighed. "In. Oh, yes! In!"

"Good," he answered. "Yes."

After several thrusts, the baby suddenly joined in the dance, undulating in time with their movements.

"I don't want to hurt her."

John pressed his hands against Joss's hips to stop her motion.

Like shards of foil reflecting the silver moon, his eyes gleamed in the dark. A sharp line dividing the expanse of his brow shimmered with drops of perspiration and his mouth formed a jagged O-shape as she looked down on him.

His frown eased only when Joss lowered her head and smiled.

"You won't. She's enjoying the rock and roll."

He nodded and Joss started moving again.

After a while, her quickening moans announced her readiness.

"Hold on, baby, this is going to hit…!"

Was she speaking to him or to their child? She didn't know and didn't care.

"This…! John, oh God!"

He gasped in astonishment as her orgasm pounded across her body in waves of tension and release. The strong muscles hugging her stomach clenched rhythmically as her head lolled back against her shoulders, his name falling from her lips in a cascade of groans and sighs.

The sight of her suspended above him, quaking in ecstasy, pushed him past his breaking point. He shuddered as he thrust into her, pulsing again and again in time to her aftershocks.

 _The washcloth he brought her was warm and soothing. She cleaned herself while he got a glass of water from the kitchen. When he returned to the leather couch, she had already slipped on her t-shirt and was feeling around the floor for the panties which, in their earlier rush, he had flung on a near-by arm chair. Soon she was fully dressed, finger-combing her knotted hair. He pulled on jeans, but left his torso bare to emphasize that he was at home. He wanted more kisses and she gave them, standing rigid in the fierce circle of his arms. But soon she was ready to leave, to let the danger and disorder of their lives enfold them once again. The future wasn't foretold and she wasn't ready to count on the present either. To her, taking this relationship one day at a time seemed like the best option._

Joss rolled on her side as soon as they untangled. She felt sleep's hot breath wafting over her even as John's kisses painted her throat and breasts. The disheveled sheets challenged her drowsy coordination and it took all her depleted energies to wriggle under them when he climbed out of bed.

By the time he returned from the kitchen with a warm washcloth, she had drifted off. Not quite unconscious, she registered his movements as he lay down behind her. He pressed his damp chest against her back, murmuring nonsense words into her hair. His arm over the prodigious bulge of her waist felt like a bulwark against any challenge, a barrier against all threats. She was safe and her baby was too.

As she sank into sleep, this present interlude already seemed like just a memory, an elusive and cherished recollection receding to billowy folds in her mind where it nestled alongside all the other fond ones she had saved over the years.

After pulling up the bed spread over their bodies he kissed her ear, neck, and shoulders, and then settled his knees behind hers for the night.


	10. November -- Our Long Love's Day

**Authors' Note: The title of this chapter is taken from the first lines of Andrew Marvel's poem, To His Coy Mistress (late 1650s):**

 _Had we but world enough, and time,_  
 _This coyness, Lady, were no crime_  
 _We would sit down and think which way_  
 _To walk and pass our long love's day._

Gauzy day – and Joss's gentle snoring – awakened him.

He pulled the sheets over his head to filter the gray dawn. Through the mink-colored cotton, muted light nudged him.

Lingering tendrils of sleep curled through his mind as he pressed his face into the soft contours of her neck.

She felt warm; along the shoulders, her skin smelled of yellow flowers, faint citrus, and sweat. As he slid down the length of her body, other fragrances rippled over her flesh like currents in a stream. Something of sandalwood, maybe a touch of musky cocoa butter on her breasts. At her waist, vanilla mingled with the amber perfume of their sex in a heady mix that aroused him to sharp desire again.

He didn't want to wake her just yet; this snuggling was enough for now. But his insistent blood surged with a different claim. As he left moth-soft kisses on her back, he angled his pelvis away so that his rowdy need wouldn't disturb her rest.

But the greedy drive didn't abate and after a minute of restraint he eased his erection against the seam of her thighs, pressing lightly. Fitting himself just so, he pushed back and forth between her perfect legs until relief came in a sudden rush of pleasure. He swallowed his joyful gasp in a wet sigh against the slope of her shoulder and sank into sleep once more.

POIPOIPOI

When he woke again, his mouth was open against her ribs, his head rising and falling with her deep breaths. She was still asleep, her arm curved across the mound of her stomach. Folding back the coverlet, he saw little crescents where his nails had dented the skin of her thigh; he hadn't realized he was gripping her so tightly.

Now pale sun oiled the gleaming floor and the tall oak head board of the bed. Mid-morning light dribbled onto stainless steel kitchen appliances and white marble countertops. By the rumbling of his stomach, he guessed it was well past ten.

This time he didn't feel the push for sex; that screaming drive to be inside her, sheathed in her, had waned somewhat. Now, just a vague yearning urged him to be closer, so he gathered her in his arms and hugged until his biceps trembled with the strain.

"Hi… Am I late?" Her drowsy voice rumbled into his chest. "If they start, I won't mind."

Nonsense phrases from a receding dream.

"Go back to sleep, Joss."

He kissed her earlobe and, when she smiled at the order, he licked the pulse at her throat too.

He laid his fingers over her stomach and the baby bumped against his hand. He pressed more firmly and her movements flowed as liquid ripples under the brown skin.

A heel, a rude knee, the string of pearls that must be her spine swimming under his palm. Would she know the difference between his hand and his lips? Could she feel the nice distinctions in his touch as she drifted along? He wanted to show her, play with her. So he bent low to embrace his daughter, alternating kisses and handprints across the flesh that separated them.

The sensation of touching her, feeling her for the first time made him queasy with joy.

He could never be this naked about these romantic impulses with the people he knew.

With them he had to button up, disguise, and guard the expression of these most tender feelings.

Even with Joss, this need to shelter behind banter or otherwise mask his sentiments was strong. Trust wasn't the issue; he trusted her, always had. And Finch too. Loved them truly, if he were ever to put a label on these disruptive sentiments.

But he knew from grim experience that if they ever pried back the scaly shell covering his emotions, chaos would follow. And this turmoil would expose him as an inept friend, a useless soldier, and an unreliable partner.

He could never let that unleashed havoc engulf them all.

But maybe this child of his was a new opening. Perhaps here was a chance to stand down, to release the fears and ancient superstitions that had corralled his sentiments for so long.

He wasn't sure he could do it, if he could let go and be the father she needed.

Dreadful images of the possible cost of relaxation made his fingers tremble over her tiny body. But he did want to try with this child, for this daughter of his.

He thought she deserved better than just his soldier best.

Though filled up with new resolution, his empty insides grumbled again. One more kiss dropped on Joss's stomach and he rolled from the bed.

Sunshine lacquered every corner of the loft now and the hours of this long day beckoned.

POIPOIPOI

A shower seemed like a clumsy disruption of the morning's mood, so he slipped into his lazy day uniform of jeans and white t-shirt and headed to the kitchen.

But the tee, with its wrinkled neck and frayed hem, seemed too plain for this occasion, so he ran up the spiral stairs to the sleeping loft to find something else to wear for Joss.

He fished a light blue polo shirt from the chest-of-drawers.

He remembered that his mother – before she got worse – bought him five new shirts in shades of blue for the first day of kindergarten, saying the color made his eyes look wonderful. He wasn't sure about that. But he did know that the sweet blue of her gingham shirtwaist dresses always cheered him, even much later when the cloth faded and times were bad.

As he pulled the blue shirt over his head, he hoped Joss would think it looked O.K. on him.

Staring into the refrigerator, he finger-combed his hair with absent strokes. There wasn't much to offer in the way of breakfast. He could pull together something from the scraps on hand, but this wasn't nearly as much as he wanted to lay out for Joss's meal today.

It should have been a feast; he wanted an extravagant display that would impress her as well as feed her. But he would make do.

With a little extra milk he stretched the batter thin so that he could have a pitcher for waffles and another for griddle pancakes in case she preferred those. Bananas were the only fresh fruit he had, but the jar of applesauce was three-quarters full and would taste good heaped on the waffles if she wanted. Only dregs of maple syrup coated the bottom of the container, but the new bottle of cane syrup was unopened.

As he stacked a second platter with waffles, Joss sat up in bed and smiled at him across the wide room.

"Hi."

She struggled a bit to gather the tawny sheets around her, arranging folds that left her arms and one shoulder bare.

"Hi."

He stared at her smooth and swollen body as she clambered from bed. He knew that displaying her clumsiness like this might make her feel embarrassed. But still he stared.

For sure her figure was ungainly, her movements awkward. But he loved seeing her untidy like this, so different from her usual structured crispness. This Joss, uncontrolled and disorderly, belonged to him in a way that the meticulous officer never would.

So as she approached the kitchen island he thought she looked like a Roman goddess draped in graceful swaths of fabric.

Lovely, golden, imposing, ravishing.

He wanted to tell her all that, to convey something of the lyrical feelings that filled him then, but the words wouldn't come. And instead a blunt invitation stepped on the greeting he wanted to offer.

"I hope you're hungry."

Palms up, he spread his fingers wide to indicate that he intended to cover every square inch of the marble counter with food for her.

"Well, good morning to you, too." She laughed in gentle correction.

"I guess I _could_ eat something, now that you mention it."

The sun, burning through its early morning haze, ignited her eyes and licked flame across her cheeks.

This was beauty, but nobility too; the closest he would ever come to splendor in this life.

"There's a frittata in the oven keeping warm. I only had a few tomatoes and an onion left from last night. But if you want, I'll make scrambled or fried too."

Tilting his head toward the stove, he indicated a pot jiggling furiously.

"Two eggs are boiled already and I can make more if that's what you want instead."

She bugged her eyes out a little, making him fear that the idea of eggs turned her stomach. But when she smiled again, he exhaled and moved to the refrigerator.

He lined up cartons of orange juice and milk next to six little cans of V-8 juice on the island, backing the display with an array of tall and short glasses. Teetering on a saucer, a whole loaf of wheat toast shimmered under its gloss of butter.

"Coffee's ready to go, but I can dig up some tea bags if you'd rather have that."

Another deep laugh, her throat stretched long and her mouth widening to a grin.

"Whose army did you invite to this breakfast anyway?"

"Only you… and _you_." He nodded toward her stomach.

She hitched up the toga around her breasts.

"Well, we _are_ hungry… after that workout."

She lowered her eyes and swiped her tongue along her lips until they glistened.

He wanted the kisses they offered. So he rounded the island and gathered her in his arms. Kissing seemed like the best way to convey everything he felt in that morning, so he took his time doing it.

When she raised her hands to caress his neck, the sheets fell from her body. He stepped on the puddled cloth to press closer until her firm stomach forced him into a possessive comma around her.

Suddenly all the thoughts bubbling inside him burst out in a flood of jumbled words.

"We could run away, you know. Ditch New York, the machine, the numbers, everything."

"And go where, John? Where could we go?"

"I'd buy a place out west, a whole valley even."

She began to chuckle, but stopped when he creased his brow.

He'd been thinking about this for a long time and he meant for her to understand how high his passion ran now that he was speaking it out loud.

To describe the tangled yearnings roiling his heart he unpacked a treasured souvenir from his troubled childhood.

"You know that old Zane Grey novel, _Riders of the Purple Sage_?"

"I've heard the name. How does it fit in?"

"It's a pretty lousy book, but the end packed a real punch, at least for me."

He could see she was interested by the way her eyebrows lifted and her mouth pursed a little.

"Well, in the last chapter, the cowboy and the heroine and her adopted daughter are being chased by rustlers. To escape, they ride into a beautiful valley. It's like a paradise on Earth. Zane Grey called it Surprise Valley."

"Sounds like they're trapped, with the bad guys coming after them."

Skepticism wrinkled her forehead but the scowl didn't dissuade him.

"Looks that way. But in the final scene the cowboy topples a giant boulder from the cliff above the only passage into the valley. That rock blocks the way in or out of Surprise Valley forever. And the man and woman and little girl live out their days in the valley in safety."

He lowered his lashes, blinking three times as the images of Zane Grey's crude but masterful story washed through his mind after decades stored away in some dusty corner. He hadn't realized that calling up Surprise Valley again could force tears to his eyes, but it had.

"I first read _Riders_ as a kid. I don't know, but it stuck with me all these years. I never could get that picture of Surprise Valley and Balancing Rock out of my mind."

If Joss ever was going to get him, really understand him and accept him for what he was, she had to follow him here. He held his breath, willing her to see him, to know him through this story.

And the softening of her eyes then, a smoky film that drifted across them as she studied his face, told him that she did see him.

Perhaps better even than he saw himself.

"Yes, we'd be safe there in Surprise Valley, I guess. Like a Western reverie in our very own Garden of Eden. But trapped like that, would we be _happy_ , John?"

"I _could_ be…with you."

He gripped her arms above the elbows and closed the distance between their faces so she could absorb the ferocity of his desire. She tilted her head to one side and let out a slight breath, then rose on tip-toes to kiss him on the mouth again.

"Sure, for a year. Even three maybe. But then you'd get restless. You know you would. You'd need something besides me..."

"…And the baby."

" _Besides_ me and the baby. You'd need something to drive you, some purpose. A mission."

He shook his head, but she went on.

"You know you would, John. It's what makes you… _you_."

He shook his head again, this time in acknowledgement. Joss was right. There would be no _Purple Sage_ haven for them.

His chest shuddered with a suppressed sob and he flicked a finger across his cheek to catch any tear that might have strayed.

He was done with weeping and with dreaming too.

She stretched her arms as far as they would go around his shoulders and squeezed hard. He knew she wanted to cheer him out of his blue mood and he adored the simple but soothing words she applied:

"We'll come up with something."

Then she shimmied her naked stomach against his torso until he quirked up one side of his mouth into a half smile.

"If you think hard and I do too, then together we'll come up with something. We're a package deal. The three of us."

He kissed her forehead and then the cupid's bow of her yielding mouth.

He thought she must have misspoken, that she meant to include Taylor in that calculation. But he cherished the idea that her new impulse was to build a family with him and their daughter at its center.

He dropped a kiss on her shoulder and started at the goosebumps he found there.

"You're getting cold, standing here in all your glory like this."

He rubbed her arms to smooth away the prickly skin.

"You could stay in these sheets all day, if you want. I don't mind."

He stroked back the errant strands of hair springing at all angles from her temple.

"But just in case you want to change, I laid out a shirt and a clean pair of sweatpants for you in the bathroom."

She nodded and squatted to try to pick up the fallen toga, but bending was no longer possible. So John swept the sheets from the floor and piled them in a bundle in her open arms.

"Breakfast is getting cold too. So scoot and I'll warm it up while you change."

As she turned toward the bathroom, he called after her:

"We've got a whole long lovely day ahead of us"


	11. December -- Flare Before Touchdown

Florid and shiny, the mouse over her partner's right eye flashed neon hues of cobalt, violet, and a cherry shade Carter had never before seen on a human face.

"You want to tell me about it, Fusco?"

Carter tried to keep the impatience out of her voice, but three hours of leaden silence had routed all the sympathy she had started the morning with.

Fusco squinted at her with his good eye for a long second, then let it roll around to scan the other occupants of the squad room.

Twenty uniformed men bustled through the bullpen, grim determination shadowing their baby faces; fifteen detectives hunched at their desks, rigid necks and stiff shoulders suggesting they were spellbound by the revelations on their computer screens. A lone woman in a brown tweed pant suit fiddled with the spigot on the cooler before it released a stream of water.

"Nothin' to say."

A blue iris surrounded by bloodied sclera peered at her through pillows of swollen flesh before he craned his head at an awkward angle to resume reading the monitor with his remaining eye.

The precinct was quiet, too quiet.

Its usual hustle and racket had settled into a low noontime hum that Carter found unnatural. She couldn't be the only cop wondering what calamity had befallen Fusco's face. He'd looked fine when he left at the end of the shift last night. Now he resembled ground chuck.

But everyone kept mum: either they already knew the answer or they didn't want to find out.

"Yeah, well that stonewall BS won't work. Not with your sorry mug screaming at me from across the room like that."

"I got nothing to say, Carter. So give it a rest and let me get my work done, why dontcha?"

Blinking at her with that Cyclops eye, he picked up his red coffee cup, the one she had given him when they cracked a four-year old cold case the previous winter. Was this some kind of high sign? A ceramic version of the eyebrow tilt his injuries prevented him from executing?

Cradling the mug in the crook of his arm, Fusco minced towards the back hall. His gait was cautious, as if every joint below the waist required prudent monitoring.

This was her last day on the job, four weeks before the scheduled delivery date. She could have passed these final hours filing her cases or filing her nails. But Carter was on a mission now; ignoring this mystery was not an option. So she pried her body from the desk chair and swayed across the bullpen after her partner. As usual, her left hand flew to her hip as she moved; it didn't really help ease her aching back much, but it did counter-balance all the weight up front so she kept it there.

Given his slow pace, she hit the empty corridor just as Fusco reached its halfway point.

The men's room was on the left, so when she saw Fusco swerve suddenly to the right, Carter knew something was up. She followed him into the ladies' room and slammed the deadbolt to lock them in.

When she rounded the privacy wall that barred the main chamber from the door, she found him crouching in front of the wooden toilet stalls, inspecting each one for feet.

Satisfied they were alone, he leaned on a porcelain sink at the far end of the room nearest the window. Its dingy glass panes had turned the winter light into ashen streaks across the tile floor.

Cranking the right faucet, Fusco ran water until its frigid temperature suited him, then splashed his face four times. Carter winced along with him as he gingerly patted his pink cheeks and forehead with paper towels.

She was through playing coy.

"So you got into a fight. With another cop, I figure."

Fusco caught her eye in the mirror and then looked down to watch the water circle the drain.

"How'd you figure?"

"Everybody was awful quiet this morning, but nobody was the least bit curious. So my guess is you got into a fight with a cop and they all know it. Am I right?"

Fusco shifted a shoulder in a way she interpreted as agreement, but offered nothing more.

"So, you going to tell me what happened? Or do I have to play Twenty Questions with you? I can stay here all afternoon if you want to drag this out. But I'm guessing Lieutenant and a few other women will be wanting to use the facilities soon.

"Time for playing games is short here, Lionel."

He shrugged again, reluctance screwing up his mouth and making his eyebrows slant upwards over the one mournful eye that studied her face.

"Yeah, it was a fight. I dropped into Leitrim's on the way home from work last night."

He paused to see if she was going to criticize that decision to stop in at the watering hole.

Easing the frown from her face, she nodded in encouragement, then offered a few speculative details to prime the pump:

"And the usual crowd was there, I guess – lots of our guys plus a handful of strays from other precincts. Maybe the Forty-third and the One-two. Right?"

Leitrim's Bar drew a loyal blue crowd from across Manhattan; its police clientele appreciated the generous plates of free sandwiches, boisterous live music, and the flotilla of glossy young waitresses plying its rooms. Carter had stopped in a few Friday evenings to make nice with precinct pals. But Leitrim's wasn't really her scene.

"I was looking to meet up with Jackson and a few of the boys, unwind a little, nothing much. And yeah, the fellas from the Twelfth were there in force."

Carter thought Fusco's chagrin leaked from every phrase. But since he was finally talking she wanted to urge him on.

"So you got into it with a couple of raw rookies who stumbled into our territory. And one of them clocked you pretty good. What was the beef about?"

Drips from the faucet punctuated the long silence.

"Jeezus, Carter!"

Red blotches spread on both cheeks, matching the crimson bruises over his brow.

"It was about you!"

"Me! What do I have to do with any of this?"

The baleful glance from his good eye made her fear that he was about to clam up again. But now that the topic was out in the open, he seemed to shrug off a great burden as he hurried along with the story.

"Those tin-plate jerks wanted to know how come you got knocked- … I mean, were expecting… when you didn't have no regular boyfriend or even a once-in-a-while date to speak of."

"So _my_ pregnancy is the talk of the NYPD? Those idiots lead awful dull lives if _I'm_ the top headline at their gossip sessions!"

"That's pretty much what I told 'em too. Said it was none of their damn business and they oughta keep shut about things they didn't know nothin' about. But Asshole-in-Chief Visconti wouldn't let go of it."

Fusco's jaw tightened at the mention of the blow-hard detective whose unearned swagger was notorious across the city.

"He kept ragging on about Immaculate Conceptions and Virgin Births and how if the Eighth Precinct was producing modern miracle babies like that then we owed it to the rest of the world to let everyone in on our sanctified secret."

Carter imagined that the vivid language actually used in this exchange was far cruder than Fusco would ever share with her. Men in blue waxing blue was an opportunity for exceptional viciousness, she knew.

Her partner, however clumsy and awkward he might be, was a true old-school gallant.

"So what happened to Visconti? After you two exchanged all those pleasantries about me?"

"Last I saw that asstard, he was exiting the bar, slung like a sack of potatoes between two tools from the Twelfth. He looked a little under the weather, is all I can say."

Smirking at the understatement, she offered a mild objection.

"Lionel, you didn't have to go all Thrilla-in-Manilla on the man for me."

She smiled straight at him, with her head cocked to match his angle.

"But I appreciate it. I truly do."

He sighed, his wide face creased and glum despite her cheer. His glance slid down to her heavy stomach then skipped away to the toilet stalls as new color rose in his cheeks.

"I figure what you're facing in the next few weeks is gonna to be hard enough without you getting hassle from bullshit slingers like Visconti."

She moved closer to stroke her index finger along the tender split skin above Fusco's eye. She wanted to kiss it better, but she didn't think he would welcome that kind of mushiness.

"John will appreciate it too. You know that."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't do that if I was you. You tell Wonder Boy and it's on _your_ head for any unfortunate consequences Visconti might happen to stumble across."

Despite his warning tone, the prospect of that mayhem brought a smile to Fusco's lips at last.

"You and him getting along pretty good now, looks like."

He raised his eyebrows, which forced a brief whistle of pain.

"Yeah, we're doing alright now. We're finding our way, I think."

She nodded and hoped the lilt in her voice would say that she didn't mind sharing this new turn with him.

"You gonna keep the baby then? No adoption like we talked about a while back?"

Noting the relief that loosened the muscles of his broad shoulders, she went on.

"No, I couldn't do it, Lionel. You know, I did meet with a nice family – interracial and everything. They had already adopted one child. The sweetest little boy you ever could see, named Steven. They would have cared for her, would have been a good home for her, I guess.

"But, you know, this baby, she's mine. _Ours_ really. We made her. No way could I give her up."

A sly twitch capered across his mouth as he ventured further.

"Couldn't give _him_ up either, I figure."

"And just how do you figure that?"

Fusco assumed an aggrieved look that turned comical when he grinned.

"Hey, detecting is my business, Carter. I see how Mr. Thundercloud is stepping a little lighter these days. How he's got a shine in his eye that didn't used to be there not too long ago."

"Really? You can see all that?"

A glance in the mirror showed a goofy smile was plastered across her face.

"Sure. He ever tell you about how we wrapped up that Gilmore case last Thursday?"

She shook her head and waved a hand to encourage more revelations.

"Well, after we fished that Joan Collins- looking dame out of the East River, she was shivering something awful and howling to raise the dead. It was colder than a witch's… Well, than a witch. So our mutual friend takes off his overcoat and slings it around the lady's shoulders, just like the Caped Crusader or something."

Fusco's eyes got rounder and his mouth gaped open as he added detail to his story.

"But instead of thanking him or maybe even smiling a little, fake-ass Joan Collins starts in screaming holy murder. I wanted to deck the ungrateful bag of diamonds, but you know what he did? He just buttoned up the coat until it reached her chin and then hugged her real hard all the while stroking her hair. It was the damnedest thing I ever saw. Him standing there, smiling down at her dripping head, stroking her hair over and over and sort of humming. Some kinda lullaby or something."

Fusco shook his heavy head and puffed out his cheeks, releasing a soft sigh at the memory.

"The old dame calmed down after a while and then he let her loose. He got outta there in the nick of time, just before two unis showed up to see what the racket was all about. I'm telling you it was just the damnedest thing, Carter. Like he didn't even care if he got caught or nothin'."

She could feel mist rising in her eyes and tried to blink it back into place.

"He's a good man, Lionel. You know that."

"Yeah, he is. You got yourself one of the good ones."

After a pause, Fusco lowered his voice so far that she had to lean forward to catch his words.

"He told me he was thinking of quitting."

"Quitting?" She whispered to match his soft tones.

"Yeah, you know, looking for a safer gig, something that doesn't involve shooting and getting shot at all the time."

She reared back and her balance was thrown off enough to require clamping a stiff hand on the sink for stability.

"But I don't want that, Lionel. I mean, I want him safe, of course. But out of the line of fire? Behind some desk? I just don't see that."

"Me either, to tell you the truth."

Fusco's evident relief made her feel like she was on the right track, even if that path was rocky and so trampled over its direction was hard to follow. What he said next confirmed her resolve:

"Helping people, it's what he's made for, Joss. Kinda like his purpose, ya know. And I think, in a funny way, helping people helps him."

"Did you tell him that?"

"Well, I didn't want to say much when he got to talking like that. Most of the time it's just a word here, a word there. You know how he is. So when he gets into a talking mood, I kinda like to just stay silent, let him go on how he wants."

She remembered an old saying she'd heard somewhere: It can't be a coincidence that the words _listen_ and _silent_ have the same letters.

Her partner was indeed a wise man.

"But when he was done, I did say one bit. I told him he was good at it – the helping people thing. And he oughta stick with it if he could find a way."

"What did he say then?"

"Nothing for a real long time. Then he kinda shook his head, like he was swimming up out of a dream, and said _you_ had the same idea."

Pounding on the washroom door interrupted their communion.

A female voice growled: "Hey! Open up in there! This isn't a conference room, for crissake!"

Carter's shout echoed off the hard tile floors and rattled the door in its frame:

"Alright, alright! Give me a minute, will ya!"

She grabbed the red mug from the lip of the sink and jerked back the door's deadbolt. After some ungainly shuffling and ornate politeness, Fusco got her to squeeze across the threshold in front of him.

She took his arm, casting a giant smile at the flustered woman in tweed who confronted them as they emerged from the bathroom.

Then with elbows still hooked, the partners navigated the crowded squad room, heavy stomachs and sore backs giving them identical postures as they ambled past the astonished eyes of the entire precinct.


	12. January -- Pilot In Command

_4:45 a.m._

Tension thickened the dank atmosphere in Harold Finch's marine blue Lexus.

Outside, the brittle air was dark and crisp; inside the climate was humid with suspicion, leavened only by the vaguest whiff of hope.

Finch and his elderly passenger barreled along the pre-dawn boulevards of Brooklyn in a silence he found understandable but almost unbearable.

He hoped the turbulence rolling off Cecelia Griffin as she clenched beside him was closer to curiosity or even anticipation rather than the anger suggested by the deep frown lines between her eyes.

Finch realized with a galloping stomach that this was not a social situation he had ever prepared for or even imagined: Mrs. Griffin's daughter was scheduled to deliver a baby this morning and Mrs. Griffin hadn't the faintest idea about the circumstances or location of this momentous event.

Moreover, she had never laid eyes on the father of her daughter's child or even learned his name.

And now a complete stranger with thick glasses, an immoderate vocabulary, and a purple cashmere scarf had bundled her behind these smoke-tinted windows to drag her on a wild ride across town.

Finch felt inept, utterly unprepared for the delicate diplomacy these unprecedented circumstances required.

Nuances and subtleties beyond his ken rippled through his hyper-alert mind, but he felt unable to grasp them. He was unsure of what to say to soothe his wary passenger. And despite all his elaborate planning and preparation he knew himself to be utterly inadequate in every way that mattered in this moment.

But one thing Finch knew for certain: he was grateful beyond measure that the original plan – to send John to fetch Mrs. Griffin – had been discarded as unworkable.

POIPOIPOI

 _4:10 a.m._

Reese knew Taylor realized who he was.

Joss sprawled across the back bench of the sedan while her son sat in frigid silence in the front seat as Reese navigated the rutted streets in search of safe passage to the clinic where their baby would be born.

Several months ago Joss had described in sketchy but compelling detail how she had broken the news of her pregnancy to her son. According to her sunny account, the boy was remarkable supportive, enthusiastic even, but Reese remained skeptical.

He hadn't wanted to burst her bubble, so he'd not speculated about the rats' nest of adolescent emotions he imagined must be knotted behind Taylor's mild facade. He'd been a teenaged boy a few decades ago. And he knew first-hand the resentment, squirmy curiosity, and pervasive revulsion that could sour Taylor's reactions to this sticky situation.

From a kid's point of view, thinking about any adults having sex was bad enough. Picturing his mother in such a position was sickening. And her having sex with a complete stranger was just plain gruesome. But then on top of it all she screws up and gets pregnant like some airhead in a hokey afterschool TV special.

Reese figured Taylor was revolted by the whole situation. At best the boy was embarrassed, at worst he was furious. So Reese hadn't attempted any independent approach to Joss's son; Taylor was her department and he planned to follow her commands in this most delicate relationship. Sidestepping controversy, she had kept the men in her life at a manageable distance and that was alright with him.

Now, driving through the chilled cityscape, Reese studied Taylor's soft features floating in profile against the gray warehouses of this ghostly sector of Brooklyn.

The boy's face hadn't hardened yet into the grizzled jaw and severe cheekbones of adulthood. His brow was smooth under the corona of unruly black spikes and his mittened hands were quiet and relaxed in his lap.

Reese thought Taylor's eyes looked clear and bright with anticipation. The surly mask of reluctance that had shadowed his features earlier in the morning had dropped away. And maybe that was a real smile flitting across his wide mouth as they turned a corner under the yellow splash from a street lamp. Certainly enthusiasm, perhaps even a glimmer of happiness, chased across the boy's face in that unguarded moment.

No matter what other emotions might swirl inside him this morning, surely Taylor joined in the excitement of the new adventure this birth represented.

Encouraged, Reese gulped a dollop of the heated air puffing through the car's interior. Something akin to joy thickened at the back of his throat and he swallowed hard to contain the emotions. He was humbled by this hint of possibilities that lay before them all. Jaded though he often was, he took consolation from these little glimpses of the interior life of this boy, this stranger whose future was now inextricably bound to his own.

Reese wished that at the very least the boy would grow to tolerate him, not as a father, but perhaps as a confidante or trusted guide. And he hoped that with time Taylor would learn to not just accept but truly love the baby sister he hadn't asked for.

Reese thought Joss deserved her son's best effort.

And just as that idea blazed through his gauzy reverie, Taylor's cheery tenor broke the silence:

"So Mom, did you call Grandma yet? I know you said you were going to."

At this point the adolescent voice cracked and landed on a lower register.

"But then I never actually saw you do it. So, you know, I was just wondering. Don't want her left out in the cold on a day like today!"

To Reese these simple words meant Taylor was ready to meet all the challenges tomorrow might bring, rising clear-headed in the present crisis when the adults around him were dazzled, distracted, and inept.

POIPOIPOI

 _4:23 a.m._

Finch had attempted to time his arrival at Mrs. Griffin's apartment to coincide with an explanatory phone call from her daughter. He had calculated that exchange down to the second and hoped that Joss had already convinced her mother that the strange man pounding on her door before dawn meant no harm.

He had hoped that Mrs. Griffin would be dressed and prepared to leave with him, already reassured by Joss's explanation of the admittedly odd arrangements. He was to be the chauffeur, the designated escort who would guide Mrs. Griffin to the secret location where her daughter was waiting to deliver her baby.

Finch had plotted out the entire sequence in his mind and thought he had covered all the contingencies: He had built a safe house – a fortress-like clinic really – where the delivery could take place away from suspicious authorities. He had bought – or coerced - the services of reliably discreet medical professionals. With him in command, everything was arranged, all was secure. Now, on the appointed day, the final pieces would fall into place just as he had planned, with each participant moving to his or her assigned place on the board before the sun rose over Brooklyn.

Instead things went spectacularly amiss.

The woman who answered his knock looked bewildered, frightened, and decidedly uncooperative. With her flowered night gown cinched tightly under a maroon flannel robe, her hair in pink rollers, and sleep-clouded eyes starting from her head, Mrs. Griffin looked positively combative.

As it turned out Joss's call had not preceded his arrival. Whether her timing was off or he had moved too swiftly, the result was that her mother was poised to ring for the police to dispatch the intruder fidgeting on her door step.

So Finch slowed his speech and lowered his voice to bring warmer tones to the weird proposal: he wanted Mrs. Griffin to climb into a strange limousine, travel across two boroughs, disembark at an unknown destination in Brooklyn, and join him in waiting for the operation that would bring her granddaughter into the world.

After stitching what he hoped was a reassuring smile across his lips, Finch explained that this was all arranged to ensure maximum comfort for Joss. And maximum security for her entourage of friends and associates.

And above all maximum safety for the mysterious stranger who had fathered this baby.

As he offered this convoluted justification, Finch realized it all sounded extremely peculiar; a puzzle swaddled inside an enigma wrapped in a high-stakes scheme. Only a naïf would harbor positive thoughts about this plan.

And, like her daughter, Mrs. Griffin didn't strike him as gullible in the slightest.

He was well into the second paragraph of this dubious proposition, gulping for air as he watched Mrs. Griffin's eyes narrow. Indeed her hand was sliding into the robe pocket for the phone to raise the alarm when a trilling ring tone announced Joss was on the line at last.

Finch released a long blow of relief as he heard fragments of Joss's explanation waft from the device:

" _I'm on my way to the clinic right now. Maybe twenty minutes away at most, Mama."_

Mrs. Griffin growled a short reply: "I don't know, Jossy. This is peculiar, awful peculiar."

" _Unusual, Mama. Just call it unusual, O.K.?"_

Mrs. Griffin harrumphed her skepticism and then lowered her voice to plunge to the heart of the matter:

"Is this _**him**_?" Her whisper sounded desperate to Finch's ear. "I mean, is it _**his**_ baby?"

Finch felt his eyebrows ascend at the confusion and a strangled yelp escaped his lips. When the words of protest clotted at the back of his throat, he was grateful that Joss beat him to it.

" _No, Mama. John is here with me and Tay. We're driving to the clinic right now. Everything is going to be alright, you'll see. Just go with Harold there and everything will be just fine."_

Finch was sure Joss's commanding words did serve to calm her mother, though Mrs. Griffin flung a withering look at him before pronouncing the plan "creepy" but acceptable. He pursed his lips to form a reply but thought better of it. They would have plenty of time to properly introduce themselves before the morning was over.

Energized and ready to play her part at last Mrs. Griffin dressed quickly. After only six minutes, she emerged from her bedroom in a chartreuse sweater topping a blue-and-white pinstriped shirt over navy pleated slacks. The sleekness of the outfit suggested to Finch that she intended to play her role in this momentous occasion with meticulous care.

He appreciated the precision of her sartorial choices and the intensity of all her unspoken gestures. Her approach to this and other matters of importance mirrored his own. Although she might not see it now, he knew Cecilia Griffin could be turned into a valuable ally.

They walked to the car in silence, high stepping through the drifts of crusted snow along the curb.

As he held the car door open for his reluctant guest, moisture sprang to his eyes. But Finch decided the biting January wind had raised that dampness, nothing more.

POIPOIPOI

 _6:17 a.m._

Shaw had kept quiet for as long as she could, but after fifteen minutes of twitching, she spit it out:

"Carter must have been braindead when she picked this fucking clinic! The walls are nauseating!"

Fusco eyeballed the pea-soup tiles that covered every square inch of the cavernous waiting room. Walls, floor, ceiling all covered in slick, slimy green.

He agreed with Shaw's assessment – the color did remind him of vomit - but giving in to her bile was not on the agenda this morning. So he shrugged with a slow roll of his shoulders and scanned the empty cavern one more time.

"Well, ya know, I don't get the idea she picked it exactly. More like built and paid for by Four-Eyes the Science Guy."

They looked around the waiting room again and glanced toward a set of doors that blocked the east-running corridor.

Fusco knew his mouth had to be the mirror image of Shaw's fish-faced expression; it was impossible not to be dazzled by Finch's creation. Even if the walls were Kermit-green.

Two wings sprawled across the floor of the windy warehouse on this hipster-free block in Brooklyn. State-of-the-art medical equipment twinkled in every corner of the space.

When they had first arrived to begin their vigil, Finch had provided a tour of the place.

While Shaw grunted beside him, Fusco kept silent as the descriptions rolled out of the little man: pharmacy chock full of every pill an over-educated addict could dream of; offices and patient rooms by the dozens, crammed with sleek new furniture; a command center with a bank of blinking monitors ready to leap into service behind a nurses' station. Two flint-eyed women bolted to chairs behind the computers were as gray and unmovable as the Italian marble topping its counters.

When he'd entered the building, Fusco had spotted a garbage bin crammed with plastic wrapping: even the towels and bed sheets in the place were fresh off the shelf. How Finch forgot to set up a F.A.O. Schwartz-size gift shop and a fancy cafeteria with a French maître d' was a mystery Fusco planned to ask about at some future date.

To staff this wonderland of a clinic, Finch said he'd hired four surgeons, three neo-natal specialists, two anesthesiologists, six obstetrical nurses, and three orderlies with shiny new Ivy League degrees. Maybe a partridge in a pear tree was chained out back.

Fusco knew Carter had carved a place in that posh crowd for her own doctor only after she pitched a two-day howling fit. He had never seen both Finch and Reese cower with fear at the same time; he figured they could hold their own in any match requiring only brains or brawn. But he was pretty certain it was pure terror trembling on their lips when he met them the morning after that epic throw-down with Carter.

Now it was just him and Shaw loitering in the swamp-colored waiting room. Her bristling temper must have driven the rest of the party to another side of the clinic. Or to another borough.

Fusco bounced his gaze around the room again.

"And what's so bad about it anyway? Place looks OK to me. I mean, over the top, sure. But whaddya expect from Glasses? A Skid Row tenement or something?"

Shaw was sprawled in the row of chairs opposite him, her ankle cocked over her knee like she usually did. Just once, he wanted to see her strike that kind of pose in a dress blinged-out with sequins and embroidery instead of the black tights and sausage-casing tops she always wore.

To get her goat - and take his mind off the action in the operating room down the hall - he waggled his eyebrows at Finch's miniature operative.

"Somethin' eatin' your craw, Squirt?"

She threw her cell phone at him. Hard. It landed on the orange plastic chair beside him and they both watched as it rattled around the seat's shallow bowl until its clattering stopped.

"This waiting is for shit."

Shaw dealt him yet another scowl to go along with the deck of frowns and grimaces she had tossed throughout their vigil.

"Yeah, I guess tough mugs like you just pop out babies on command, hunh, Shaw? No fuss, no muss, no bother, that your motto?"

Fusco propped a sweet grin on his face.

"You learn cool stuff like that in Secret Agent Academy or what?"

"I learned how not to get knocked up in the first place, asshole."

"You and Mother Theresa must have been besties, I figure. Texting and finger nail painting and braiding hair and everything."

"Bite me, Fusco."

The glower twisting Shaw's face seemed so deeply etched Fusco thought she might sprain something major if she held it any longer.

To ease the tension and show no feelings were permanently scarred, he heaved a Baby Ruth bar at her.

"Sink your fangs into this instead, why dontcha? We're gonna be here for a while."

POIPOIPOI

 _5:06 p.m._

Clammy wool under her arms, sticky ooze between her legs.

Dense cold pressing on her despite the bulky coat; needles stinging the soles of her feet through unlaced tennis shoes.

And a ton of embarrassment to tie the whole travesty up in a sloppy wet bow.

Carter felt hot shards of shame pricking at her neck, ears, and eyelids as her son tugged her from the back seat of the sedan.

Balancing on a frozen rut where the sidewalk should have been, she sniffed into her woolly sleeve and blurted out a lame apology:

"Sorry about that, John. I guess Harold will have to get another car now that I did a job on this one."

With shadows drifting over his face, John's smile seemed strained.

"But your water breaking is a good sign, isn't it? It's got to mean everybody's on the same schedule now, right?"

His words would have sounded much more confident if not carried on the high wavering voice that delivered them.

Carter noted that the two sets of male eyes starting from their sockets as she navigated the icy pavement to the warehouse door seemed identical. Bulging in unblinking awe while she swayed along, all four pupils were ringed with matching bands of white that blazed through the pre-dawn gloom.

 _In the dark, all cats look gray._

The old saying pumped through her with a lunatic beat. Giddy, her mind ricocheted from nonsense to foolishness and back again. The idea of her two men resembling each other was silly, of course. But here they were, mouths agape, rigid shocks of hair forming comic silhouettes against the navy sky, hands dangling uselessly.

 _All cats look gray in the dark._

Surrendering to the inanity of the refrain, to the utter absurdity of everything, she loosed a cackle that rattled against the corrugated siding of the warehouse.

And like identical Jack-o-lanterns out of season, two sets of shining teeth gleamed back, her laughter somehow soothing them all.

Then Taylor slid to the door, jerked it open, and a ball of warm air rolled across the ice to engulf them. John leaned forward to take her elbow.

And then conviction swept over her like an avalanche: Despite all the obstacles, the doubts and the dread, everything was going to be alright.

She was going to make it.

Yes, they were going to make it.

POIPOIPOI

 _6:27 a.m._

Finch had brought the fully-loaded iPhone for just this purpose.

After refereeing an hour of nervous sniping between Joss's mother and her son, Finch had fished out the pristine box from his briefcase and handed it to the beleaguered teen.

Gratitude crinkling his face, Taylor Carter had fled to an office at the far end of the corridor. As the boy departed, Finch surveyed the remaining occupant of the room and tried to suppress the blinking that blurred his vision.

Cecelia Griffin seemed calm enough. Now.

She had chosen to stretch her legs out on the narrow hospital bed that dominated the room, leaning her back at an oblique angle against the pillows. She looked almost relaxed, he thought, even rather regal. Though a frown creased her forehead, her soft dark eyes regarded him with what he hoped was mild inquiry, even a tentative friendliness.

Finch remained upright in the stiff guest chair at the foot of the bed, his knees together; when he became conscious of how fiercely his hands were gripping the arms, he loosened his fingers and expelled a breath that he prayed wouldn't sound too much like a sigh.

The acid-yellow sweater and navy slacks Celia wore gave off the faintest tang of limes and lemons, just enough to counter the stale air of the hospital room. Finch found her gleaming brown face and stately figure both fashionable and dignified. Her steel gray hair was immaculately curled; the long silver hoops that dangled beside her cheeks gave her a polished but youthful air.

Finch didn't know her, of course, so he wasn't sure if the tiny beads of perspiration along the brow were an everyday feature or something that betrayed inner turmoil.

If her feelings were in an uproar, well, she certainly had plenty to be agitated about.

Now that Taylor was safely out of the way, he decided to start again with the rocky conversation he had attempted at her front door.

"Mrs. Griffin…"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, call me Celia! You and me, we're in too deep and too dirty to stand on formalities at this point. _Harold_."

"Yes, well then. Celia. First let me apologize for the rather unorthodox manner of our introduction."

Her snort was unlady-like, but the smirk that accompanied it reminded him forcefully of her daughter.

"I suppose you could say that coming to my apartment before dawn and kidnapping me is 'unorthodox.' But I might call it something a bit harsher, if I had a mind to."

"Yes, I agree, Celia, this entire arrangement is highly unusual. Eccentric, you might even say. But you mustn't blame either your daughter or Mr. Reese for these circumstances…"

"Is that his last name? Reese? Jocelyn only gave me John to go on. When she finally gave me a name at all.

Finch held up both hands, palms out, then brought the right index finger to his lips. Beseeching was not a good stance in most situations, but these were extraordinary circumstances. 

"Please understand, I was the one who insisted on secrecy. I thought it best if Jocelyn's baby were delivered in private accommodations where she and Mr. Reese could spend as much time together as possible without interference from outside, um… authorities."

He could feel heat rising in his cheeks and perspiration seeping from his hairline onto the stiff collar of his shirt. Her next words didn't settle the turmoil in his stomach, but he believed she was trying to soothe him all the same.

"Well, look, Harold, this is 2014, not 1814. No need to get all prissy about it. Plenty of women have babies without being married nowadays. It doesn't sit exactly right with me, mind you. So I can see your point about staying out of the spotlight. But still, it's no cause for shame or hiding."

Here they could find common ground at last. He met her gaze once more and didn't suppress the vigor of his reply.

"Oh, I completely agree. I don't think that either Detective Carter or Mr. Reese feel any shame about these developments. In fact, quite the contrary, if I can judge by their behavior these past few weeks. I firmly believe that they welcome this baby with all their hearts."

Here he paused, only for a second, long enough to give the next phrase a bold emphasis.

"But the work he and I undertake requires a certain amount of discretion…"

Celia lowered her brows into a squint that almost hid the glimmer firing in her eyes. Finch felt something akin to amusement - or at least sympathy - warmed her next words.

"Wrong side of the law, that it?"

"Well, not exactly. But we do bend the rules when we need to."

"Umpf! Illegal and dangerous to boot, I figure."

"Yes. At times."

"From the way Jocelyn was slipping and sliding around, hesitating about even giving me John's name, I guessed as much. If he'd been some upstanding Rotary Club type, I figure she wouldn't have been so hush-hush and all."

Finch hurried on with his explanation, wanting to get his side of the story on the table without descending into an unnecessarily defensive posture.

"But you must understand, what John does – what we do together – helps people who cannot otherwise help themselves. Ordinary people who need protection. And I can say for certain that John has saved many innocent lives."

"You make him sound like Robin Hood and Superman all rolled up into one there."

She was smiling by this point, first tightly, then with teeth flashing.

"Hardly that, Celia. But we do our best and we get results."

"Using those 'unorthodox' methods, I guess."

She raised both hands to make the understood quotation marks in the air. Dimples Finch had originally seen on Joss darted and dashed on her mother's cheeks now.

"And I bet all your 'unorthodox' methods made you plenty rich too. Right, Harold?"

More air quotation marks highlighted her point.

He looked down and said nothing.

"Oh, don't play coy all of a sudden! You built this place, you set up this whole shebang, you even kidnapped an innocent old woman!"

As she said this last, Celia's brown face shone and her lips curved with what Finch interpreted as conspiratorial good humor.

"So no, modesty just doesn't suit you, Harold. And anyway, like I said, you and me, we're in this too dirty and too deep to mince around anymore."

He tilted his head to one side, then removed the glasses though they didn't really need polishing again.

"Well, yes, over the years I have acquired the means to be comfortable."

"And a sky-high pile of guilt too, right?"

Finch closed his eyes, pausing to wonder at how the mother could be as perceptive as the daughter. He returned the glasses to his nose and didn't try to stifle the sigh that escaped him then.

"Guilt takes multiple forms, Celia. As numerous as the causes from which it arises. And I'm familiar with far too many of them. That inventory would keep us here all day, I'm afraid."

She leaned back against the pillows again.

"Well, I'm not going anywhere. Until they bring me my grandbaby, I've got all the time in the world."

POIPOIPOI

 _6:12 a.m._

Reese felt uncovered. Not naked exactly, but exposed nonetheless.

Blue fabric of the medical scrubs billowed around his legs though he had cinched the drawstring as tightly as he could at his waist. When he loped after the gurney, the swinging doors of the operating room sent a chill up his bare arms and under the smock's short sleeves. A lanky nurse glared at him until he pulled the square cloth cap over his hair.

Lying flat on the bed, Joss craned her head around to follow his progress into the room. Her eyes looked twice as big as usual and their glowing whites seemed pliable like foam. The dark frame of her hair was trapped inside an elasticized shower cap so her face seemed foreign against the stark white sheets, unfamiliar to him despite the half-smile playing across her lips.

A metallic tangle of equipment, monitors, wires, tubes, basins and trays bristling with surgical tools surrounded them. Antiseptic smells clung to the green tile walls in a sour miasma that invaded first his nose and then his mouth.

Reese counted four murmuring, genderless doctors on each side of the gurney, reaching out to touch Joss, pulling the sheets back from her bulging stomach. Others, also in blue scrubs, moved in measured ceremony around the room. Tan or chalk white or mahogany, their faces were masked, eerie and anonymous. Only darting eyebrows and varying amounts of sweat distinguished them one from another. They seemed sinister to him, robots with mechanized gestures and indecipherable language.

He wanted to protest, to stop these marauders before they could complete their raid, even though his rational brain told him this was the plan, this was their job.

Someone suspended a green cloth drape on a frame across Joss's chest to screen her torso from view.

A throat cleared behind a mask, then a damp cough jarred him to attention.

"Uh, you…um, yes. Dad. If you'll take a seat right here then, we can get underway."

This impersonal sing-song from the anesthesiologist sitting at the top of the bed sounded too young, too casual. A slender black hand, maybe female, pointed at a metal stool rolled to a position a few inches from Joss's face.

Suddenly, he felt excluded, belligerent:

"I'm not sitting. And don't set up that screen. I want to see."

A short, stocky figure approached on his left, dressed like the others in blue scrubs. From beneath the surgical cap a thick braided rope of teak-brown hair draped down the back.

"John, isn't it? Joss has told me lots about you. I'm Doctor Robbins, her obstetrician."

Transparent surgical gloves encased her pudgy hands, which looked red and chapped. She didn't touch him, but raised her right hand in the air, palm splayed, a kind of peace sign, he felt.

Not waiting for a reply, Dr. Robbins pointed again at the low stool.

"So John, we need you to sit right there beside Joss."

He understood her words, but didn't move. When he looked back at Joss, her gaze was fogged over with anesthesia, though she was awake and trying to follow the conversation.

"You're a soldier too, right? Just like Joss?"

Dr. Robbins' deep voice took on a warm coloration that captured his attention.

"How could you know that?"

"Same stiff spine, same hard head. Just like Joss."

A wink creased the folds around the doctor's right eye. As she looked up at him, her mask crumpled over what he took to be a smile.

"So here's the deal, John. Right now, right here, in this room, _I'm_ in command."

She cocked her head to indicate the other medical personnel in the room.

"Took us a few minutes to get that straight, but the team's all squared away now."

Joviality done, she pointed again at the stool.

"So now we want you to sit right here. Close to Joss, where she can see you."

He was going to obey Dr. Robbins, he knew that. Still the objection bubbled up, despite himself:

"But the screen…"

"…is going to stay right there, John. Your job is to be with Joss, keep her calm, and get ready to greet your baby. Can you do that?"

He nodded, a tiny gesture, but enough to send a wave of nausea surging through his stomach.

"This your first, John?"

He sat down before nodding again and scooted the stool closer to the gurney. Now with his sight line lowered, Dr. Robbins looked immense and her firm tone reverberated in his head:

"Well, Joss and me, we're vets. Been there and back. Seen it all and come out safe on the other side. So you just relax, John. Let's get this show on the road and let you meet your baby _pronto_."

Dr. Robbins returned to her position on Joss's left flank and from where he sat, Reese could no longer see anyone else.

As he stared into Joss's placid eyes, his nausea subsided; her calm washed through him in pulses timed to the squeezing of her cool dry hand.

Confident whispers flowed around and through him, only a few phrases in plain English emerging from the jargon-laden chanting that filled the room:

"Joss, can you feel that? Good. And that? Good. After this all you'll feel is some tugging and a little pulling."

"Following the line of the previous incision."

"Parting the fascia."

"Peritoneum opened…give me the bladder blade."

"The head… Yes. Right… suction. Now."

Furious yelling began instantly, paused for a gasp, and then resumed at a higher pitch. Several adult voices chuckled as the squawks continued.

Dr. Robbins appeared from behind the curtain, a tiny figure wrapped in blue fabric cradled in her hands.

"Joss, John, here is your daughter!"

The doctor pulled back a corner of the blanket to show them the baby's gleaming body, red, wrinkled and wondrously perfect. A clamp dangled from the severed umbilical cord. Her legs, arms, and fingers were long and graceful. Above a heart-shaped face, her crown was topped with thick black waves. Her bright eyes radiated shock and frank curiosity.

Reese stretched his arms to his daughter. The doctor re-wrapped the cloth and laid the baby in his hands.

Joss spoke at last, to the doctor, to the baby, to the entire world:

"Nia. She's Nia Justine."

Reese took up the explanation, his intimate tones meant for only one person in that entire world.

"Nia means 'purpose' in Swahili."

He whispered this definition in his daughter's ear and he was sure her dark eyes widened at his voice.

"And Justine is… Well, we thought it fit."

At this news, Nia took in a big gulp of fresh air, assessed him with penetrating scorn, and then let out a new round of indignant cries. Her strong chest reddened with the effort and her exquisite hands reached toward her father's looming face.

Reese was enchanted. Enthralled by this beauty and grace. Bound for eternity in service to this purpose.

"Thank you for coming to stay with us, Nia. For choosing us to be your parents."

After one more hearty cry, Dr. Robbins broke the spell.

"Here, let me get Nia Justine to the warmer or Dr. Ali will have my head!"

Swaddled tightly, Nia Justine Carter was swept away to the impatient pediatrician while her father placed a trembling kiss on her mother's temple.

"And thank you, too. For this. For everything."

POIPOIPOI

 _7:22 a.m._

"What did he say her name meant?"

Shaw poked an index finger in her right ear, scrounged around a bit inside there, and then thumped the side of her head.

"Porpoise? Or purpose? I couldn't quite catch it."

Fusco wanted to clock her right there in the middle of the giant green waiting room.

Nia seemed like a pretty damn good name – short, easy to remember, a snap to spell, with a real meaning too. And anyway, where did someone with a moniker like Sameen get off making fun of anybody else's name?

Next to him, Finch, Mrs. Griffin, and Taylor stood in a semi-circle around the world's smallest op, frowns folded at various angles across their foreheads.

Shaw stared at them for a long minute with one of her burn-you-to-a-crisp looks. Then she let a wide zigzag smile deliver her verdict:

"Yeah, well, the big guy always talks like he's got marbles in his mouth."

Taylor was the first to laugh, Fusco and Joss's mother joining him in boisterous chorus. When Finch finally let go, the glee came in soft hoots that rumbled toward the others then echoed off the hard surfaces all around them.

After a couple of minutes of this hilarity, Fusco recovered enough to offer an enthusiastic comment on their recent visit to the nursery.

"She's a true beaut, ain't she? The real deal! Most kids, they come out looking like your standard-issue baby. You know, generic. Like Winston Churchill or a shrunken Mr. Clean or something."

Fusco paused to catch his breath, then doubled down on the wonder and awe.

"But that Nia Justine, pure gorgeousness! I mean, even through the glass, she looked like a real person! Her own little self right from the get-go, nobody else."

Mrs. Griffin sucked her teeth at him. She wasn't going to let that comment pass.

"Well, Nia looks _exactly_ like her mother, if you ask me."

Laughing, Fusco didn't back down: "Yeah, like I said, gorgeous!"

Taylor had put his new iPhone to good use: even with odd reflections off the nursery picture window, the photos of his baby sister snug in the arms of her father were professional grade according to Finch, who asked that the images be forwarded to him. Fusco figured the brainiac could just Bluejack the photos if he wanted, so asking polite like that was special.

Taylor's snaps had captured a fresh angle on the Man in The Suit. Fusco thought the toothy grin and raised brow gave him a loose, fizzy air. Holding Nia up for everybody to see, Reese looked like he had personally invented the whole idea of fatherhood.

Craning her neck to get a closer look at the pictures, even Shaw unwound her perpetual scowl to admit the baby looked sort of cute. Fusco interpreted that skimpy compliment to mean she was head-over-heels in love with Nia already.

While the others gushed over the pictures, Fusco gave Shaw a high sign – first a rolled eye, then a tilted chin, finally a stiff finger point.

Getting the prompt at last, she rummaged around in a black satchel stuffed under the first row of chairs. With a grunt she pulled out a dark wood case decorated with an ornate scalloped decal on its hinged cover.

Inside it, rows of fat Cuban cigars sparkled in cellophane wrappers sealed by gold foil bands. After grabbing a handful of smokes for herself, Shaw passed the box around the little group. Fusco took a pair; Mrs. Griffin took one and Taylor did too, ignoring his grandmother's grimace.

When fusspot Finch picked up a cigar, he held it at arm's length as he squinted. His nose crinkled up like he smelled diesel fumes. Then he let loose a mournful sigh over a mouthful of words.

"Did it have to be _cigars_ , Ms. Shaw? I believe the traditional way to greet the birth of a baby girl is with candy. A box of chocolates, perhaps. A delicious offering of sweets to herald the new arrival."

Through pursed lips he offered a final judgment on the cigars:

"These… these _things_ … look rather militant to me."

Before Shaw could open her pout for a smart-aleck reply, Fusco leaped to his sidekick's defense.

"Thumbelina and me took a vote a couple a days ago and cigars won by a landslide. Cleared it with Tall, Dark and Paternal too, just so you know."

Celia Griffin inhaled deeply as she unwrapped her cigar, eyebrows rising at the woodsy sweet fragrance.

"Oh, lighten up, Harold! This is my first granddaughter. My _only_ granddaughter. And we'll celebrate however we want to."

Fusco didn't mean for his stomach to disrupt the festivities, but a rude rumble escaped all the same.

"Sorry about that! I guess all your talk about candy set me off there, Finch. I haven't eaten anything but a chocolate bar since I got up this morning."

Shaw grunted in support.

Which Fusco took to mean baby Nia might have executed her very first miracle: he and the tiny terror were actually on the same page at the same time. The way things were going, who knew what wonders tomorrow might hold?

Breakfast as an idea was agreed upon pretty fast.

But the wrangle over accommodations set Grandma against Glasses. Mrs. G offered to cook at her apartment, but Finch insisted that the gang should be his guests at a little neighborhood diner he knew where they served the best Eggs Benedict in the city.

And right there was Nia's second straight miracle of the morning: the ultra-private Mr. Finch revealing something personal without a gun pointed at his head.

Home cooking or fine dining, Fusco didn't much care which way they went, as long as they got there quick.

When Taylor broke the quarrel at last, voting for his grandmother's home-style brunch, Fusco wasn't really all that surprised: Joss's kid was no dunce, loyal and savvy too just like her.

Fusco was glad to go along with the plan; his growling guts needed attention on the double and Mrs. Griffin looked like she knew her way around a kitchen.

And anyway, he figured he wasn't going to get another chance to check in on the happy little vigilante family again today. Nia and her parents were cozy and comfy, tucked up safe in the Fortress of Solitude for the day.

Fusco knew tomorrow would be here soon enough, bringing its own dangers and rewards, all best faced with a full stomach to go along with the full heart he carried today.


	13. May -- Jet Stream

Carter put the finishing touches on her make-up and leaned back from the bathroom vanity.

Cherry lip gloss had looked fiery under the fluorescent lights in the drugstore. But on her mouth the color seemed muted, maybe just a little bit flirty.

Her hair, draped as usual across her shoulders, didn't look festive enough. So she swooped the length into a high ponytail, freshening her face and showing off the sparks shooting from emerald posts in her earlobes.

As she lifted her arms to secure the hair-do, a whiff of fragrance - green tea notes softened by heady roses - drifted from each wrist.

Long stowed away in the lowest drawer of her dresser, the perfume seemed now like an exotic veil separating her from ordinary life. So she pulled the stopper from the fluted bottle again and dabbed a drop between her breasts and another at the nape of her neck.

Then she sketched a stripe above her lashes and hoped the charcoal liner and an extra coat of mascara might camouflage those two-ton duffel bags under her eyes.

As she stared at her reflection, she rose to her own defense: the puffiness framing her bleary eyes was entirely justified. Daily care of a rambunctious four-month old was a big challenge and Nia seemed to wake up each morning happy, healthy, and determined to drain her mother's last reserves of energy.

Carter noted the hand holding her mascara wand was trembling ever so slightly, pink-lacquered nails gleaming under the mirror's Hollywood light bulbs. Baby-generated fatigue didn't cause this shaking, she knew.

This was old-fashioned date night nerves, pure and simple. She recognized the symptoms: jumping stomach, twitchy heart, dry mouth, all signs pointing to a big case of anticipation jitters. She'd stood in front of mirrors like this since high school; dates and the nerves preceding them were pretty standard stuff after all these years.

Usually.

But then this was no ordinary date, not by a long shot.

Two days ago John had asked her to join him for dinner. At a restaurant. On a Saturday night. He planned to pick her up at her apartment. In a rented – not stolen – car.

He didn't promise to wear a tie, but he did ask her to wear a dress.

To make sure she got the right one, he'd rifled through the clothing in her closet until he found the dress he wanted her to wear. Asking how he knew so much about the contents of her wardrobe would have been a buzz-kill, so she kept quiet when he held up the hanger for her inspection.

John's choice was a narrow sheath that featured thin vertical pink stripes on a black background. A pink band at the hem matched the tape outlining the sweetheart neckline. The fabric was clingy, the cut sleek, and the spaghetti straps didn't do much to support the molded bodice.

Carter had bought the dress in a moment of extravagance one week after she met John face-to-face for the first time in the Lyric Diner.

It was a foolish straw-hat kind of dress, made for humid nights and walking bare-foot in uncut grass. Fragrant potential bloomed from its seams and darts, leaving her swooning every time she grazed the dress's flimsy ties.

She had never worn it, never had an occasion to test its summer allure.

Instead she'd put away the dress when she first hurried to bed with him. She'd assumed it would stay tucked among her dark pant suits and button-down shirts until she could dump it into a charity clothing bin.

But now, the dress would have its moment to shine.

Eighteen months after stutter-stepping into a tenuous affair, four months after bringing a baby into the world, they were finally going to go out on a date.

A real, grown-up date.

Not Thai take-out at his loft or another fried catfish supper at her mother's house.

An honest-to-God real date.

A first date.

At last.

POIPOIPOI

Harold Finch was a life-saver.

Without his timely arrival and eagerness to take on baby-sitting duties that afternoon, Carter wouldn't have been able to squeeze in a lightening manicure appointment or the sprint through the drugstore that resulted in a new collection of cosmetics.

She didn't believe for one minute that Harold's visit was pure coincidence; she figured electronic snooping had supplemented his natural nosiness, bringing him to her door for playtime with Nia at the exact moment she needed him most.

Even after she'd returned from her errands, Harold volunteered to stay on. Nia couldn't crawl just yet, but rolling over and wriggling her way into mischief wasn't beyond her powers, so the extra eyes and hands he provided were a godsend. Thanks to Finch, Carter could get dressed for her evening on the town without distraction.

She had recruited Taylor for the night shift, another first.

Despite her mother's repeated assurances, Carter just hadn't felt confident in her son's babysitting abilities. Sure, he had looked after neighborhood grade school kids to earn movie money. And he'd even helped out with kindergarteners in Sunday School from time to time, winning high marks from the perfectionist who ran that class.

But an infant was a whole nother creature. Babysitting Nia required advanced skills, patience, and a conscientious attention to detail that her brother had never displayed before. So for the first four months, Carter's reluctance had trumped Taylor's enthusiasm.

Celia Griffin had huffed and puffed, Taylor had wheedled and whined, even John had pressed the case once or twice. But Carter's protective instincts won out and she held firm.

This first date called for extreme measures, however. So she'd drafted Taylor to the cause and he'd jumped at the chance for some one-on-one time with his little sister.

POIPOIPOI

Carter had just wriggled into the pink-striped dress when John pushed through her bedroom door.

He paused at the foot of the bed to appraise her.

"It looks good. _You_ look good."

Sparse words as always, but the raised brow and shimmering eyes told a more elaborate story.

She closed the distance between them and placed a hand against his chest, her finger on the empty buttonhole halfway down. The scent of earth and leaves and maleness lifting from his skin made moisture gather at the back of her mouth.

"You too. I like the lavender shirt. But you knew that, didn't you?"

"Is _that_ what color this is?"

A deep laugh to convey the tease. An easy hint of sex in his gaze. But when she caught his hand in hers, the dampness there suggested a different sort of inner turmoil.

She wanted to kiss him then, to run her tongue over his teeth and feel his cock harden against her belly. She wanted to forget about this date, to fall into bed like last week and the week before. She didn't need a new beginning. This was enough for them.

But she sensed an unfamiliar stiffness in the tendons of his neck as he bent to bring his lips close to hers. Muscles along his shoulders tensed with a formality that signaled this night would not proceed like those others.

Tomorrow, if John had his way, this relationship would start fresh.

His breath was cool against her cheek as he pulled back. Rapid blinking cleared the erotic fog from his eyes and his voice took on a hushed conspiratorial tone.

"So what did you do to Finch and Nia, drug them?"

"What do you mean? They were fine when I came in here to dress. Are they all right?"

She could feel her heart revving. She knew lines had creased her forehead when John rubbed his thumb over her brow to ease them.

"Oh, don't worry, they're doing great. Come see."

He took her hand and they tiptoed into the living room.

POIPOIPOI

Stretched along the length of the couch, the playmates formed a lovely tableau.

Nia was sprawled on Finch's chest, bobbing and dipping with his inhalations like a duckling on a placid pond.

Carter thought the sharp black and white of Harold's three-piece hound's-tooth suit made a charming frame for Nia's yellow onesie with its parade of pink and purple frogs.

Harold's right hand rested on the baby's back, the left arm flung across his eyes as if to block out the lamp light.

Carter stared for a moment at her daughter's head. After considerable study she concluded that Nia's mop of black hair had indeed been carefully fashioned into a vertical crest identical to Harold's upstart rooster comb.

Intense play through the long afternoon had sent them into a deep slumber, the little half-smile twitching along his lips matched by soft bubbles drifting from hers.

Cardboard picture books, two red plastic telephones, and a squishy white baseball were strewn on the floor next to the sofa. The rubberized case of a kid-size electronic tablet peeked from under Harold's knee. A cell phone dangled from his trouser pocket, ready to hit the floor with his next turn.

Along the back of the couch a pod of stuffed animals surveyed the drowsy scene. Most of the toys were sea creatures, porpoises to be exact. Scores of fuzzy gray dolphins, porpoises, whales, orcas and assorted members of the cetacean order rolled their beady eyes around the room. Plush, woolly, molded plastic or inflated, these porpoises were all gifts from Shaw, who would not give up her stranglehold on the punning play on Nia's name. If the child grew up to be a marine biologist, she could thank Shaw for the inspiration.

Carter removed Harold's glasses from their precarious perch on the snout of a cuddly chocolate-colored sea lion.

"I don't know what happened. When I went into the bedroom to get dressed, they were hard at work on the abacus."

She pointed at the colorful rows of giant wooden beads strung from the square frame of the ancient counting device.

John's mouth quirked down as he whispered:

"Looks like all that higher math finally wore them out."

"Should I put her back in the crib? That drooling is going to make a mess on Harold's nice new vest."

John snapped a few blackmail photos of the sleeping pair before answering.

"No, just let them be. He can afford the dry cleaning."

POIPOIPOI

"Mogadishu."

John rolled the lyrical syllables off his tongue and took another sip of red wine.

Carter chuckled through a few chiding questions:

" _That's_ where we're going tonight? _Somalia_? When were you planning to tell me, John?"

Carter knew better, of course. But she wanted to prolong the lightness, the confiding mood of this exchange.

The dining table was too near the living room couch for full-throated conversation, so they were whispering to avoid disturbing the unconscious man and baby nearby.

John smiled briefly at her little joke and shared a bit more.

"It's a restaurant. On 116th street. Opened only last week."

"And just how do you know this particular spot in Harlem?"

"Owner's a friend of mine."

"More, please."

A year ago, she would have bristled at these anemic responses. But now she was relaxed enough – confident enough - to not resent having to pull each detail from him by main force.

"I met Moises in Nairobi a while back. Helped him out of a fix or two. And then when I got jammed up in Mogadishu…"

Dewy eyes trained on a spot at the far end of the table meant this was a sensitive point; an impression reinforced when John rubbed two fingers over a tiny scar Carter knew was at the base of his neck.

He didn't go on, so she finished the thought:

"…your friend returned the favor."

John seemed relieved that she didn't ask for more details.

"Yes, he did."

The hand flew from his neck to the stem of the wine glass and he continued:

"When Moises came to the States he decided to try his hand at the restaurant business. The one we're going to tonight is actually his second."

"So he's done pretty well at it, hunh?"

"Seems so. There's… um… one thing about tonight…Well, I don't want you to be surprised."

John's eyebrows rose and a flicker of amusement twisted his lips, so Carter didn't think this disclosure was going to be an ugly one.

"Yeah? What kind of surprise?"

"Moises calls me 'Rollie.' "

" ' _Rollie_?' What's that supposed to mean?"

"Short for Rollins."

"So you were John _Rollins_ when you were on assignment in East Africa?"

"Yes."

A shrug and a tilt of the head signaled that was the end of the story. At least for the moment. Carter hoped that at the restaurant, over good food and cleansing laughter, Moises might prove more forthcoming about their exploits on the other side of the world.

But for now, she was willing to change the subject. She poured more Burgundy into both glasses.

"Harold looked real tired when he came over today. Even before he started playing with Nia he seemed pretty beat. New business must be taking a lot out of him."

John looked toward his dozing friend, who shifted on the couch as if sensing he was the subject of their conversation.

"Any start up is hard. Even though Finch bought Continental Security from Hammett, getting a consultancy back on its feet after such a long inactive stretch means building client lists from scratch."

John hadn't shared much about his new work, so Carter pushed through this sliver of an opening.

"So you're the face of the agency, right?"

"Yeah, well, customer relations isn't my strong suit."

He smirked at the understatement.

Then his eyes narrowed and flashed steel, so Carter knew this new job had captured his full attention.

"But I can make a nervous client feel safe when it counts. Get him to open up when I need to. Help him see a hidden pattern or clue or connection. I'm good at that."

John didn't sound smug. Carter half expected him to say 'No brag, just fact' as the summary line for this explanation.

But instead he rapped on the table with a knuckle, each beat a bullet point highlighting the details of his new work:

"Investigating, digging for evidence, following a lead, solving a puzzle, all that's the easy part. It's building confidence that takes the most effort. But I'm pretty good at listening. Hearing the story behind the story when people talk to me.

"So yes, the job suits me."

Carter didn't want to ask the next question, wanted to skirt the touchy transition, but she had to get it out on the table.

"And the numbers keep coming, don't they? I figure that's what's got Harold tired too."

John let his eyelids flutter closed for a long moment, the lashes forming a spikey shadow over his cheekbones.

"Yes, they keep coming."

"Harold's computer keeps them coming, right?"

The goblet's base hit the wooden table with a thump that sent the wine sloshing almost to the rim. John's eyes moistened in wonder and his lips made soft smacking sounds before he got out the next words:

" _What_ did you say?"

Carter shrugged as if this was just a casual discussion of tradecraft, a minor exchange of gossip. Rather than the soul-shifting turn in their relationship it actually was. The intimacy, the domesticity of this moment made her feel this was as good a time as any to share her speculation.

She took a fortifying gulp of wine and continued:

"How else could you guys know when someone's about to be in trouble? I just figured Harold built some sort of supercomputer that can siphon information from government feeds."

"Finch will be impressed."

"I _am_ a detective, you know."

Reese tipped his glass in her direction.

"The best one I ever met."

She smiled and bowed her head slightly, accepting what she knew was a high compliment.

After a pause, Carter wanted to turn the conversation to a less emotional topic, without losing the train of this thorny discussion altogether.

"So with you at Continental, how is Harold dealing out the assignments?"

"Shaw's stepped up big time."

"By _herself_? No offense, but she's only one person, even if she _is_ a tough little sucker. How can she possibly handle it all?"

John laughed, a broad gesture whose generosity let Carter exhale in relief.

"I won't tell her you doubted her abilities!"

Then more seriously:

"Shaw's brought in some new people. Motivated recruits with specialized training and the background and skills the job requires. She handles the job and she handles them."

His lips narrowed into a fine line of confidence as he wrapped up the assessment.

Carter nodded in recognition, relieved that John seemed to have shed whatever guilt he might have felt initially about these changes.

"Yeah, Fusco mentioned one of them. Somebody called Ogden, I think. Real piece of work, he said."

"Actually, that's _two_ pieces of work. Ogdens are twins. Chelsea is good on the high wire. Literally. She used to be a circus acrobat before she joined the Marines. And Carla likes explosives. And stilettos."

"She's into high-heel shoes?"

"No. Long, thin daggers. If Carla brings a knife to a gun fight, you can bet she wins."

He extended his left hand in a rapier thrust and then sliced Zorro's sign of the Z into the air.

Carter chuckled at the image of fancy swordplay dazzling the streets of cynical New York:

"Sounds like a new urban legend in the making! I bet Lionel is already working overtime to come up with the slogans. I don't know if The Babe with the Blade can ever replace The Man in The Suit. But I can see Lionel making a good push for it!"

Carter interrupted their laughter to tap her watch.

She felt the scolding-mom voice slipping past her teeth before she could stop it.

" _What_ has got _into_ Taylor? I told him to get back home by six at the latest. And here it is almost seven fifteen!"

John fished the cell from his jacket's breast pocket and scrolled through messages.

"According to his most recent text, he's less than twenty minutes out."

" _Wait, what_! You're texting with Taylor? Since when?"

"Almost every day for about four months now. Started not long after we brought Nia home."

"He can barely manage to check in with me by phone. After I beg and plead with him. And now he's texting with _you_? What's he texting you about, anyway?"

Carter knew her tantrum included equal parts jealousy and relief.

She wanted the two men in her life to get along, to mean something to each other beyond the bare bones of biological connection. Only she had expected to be front and center in shaping that relationship, not an out-of-the-loop cheerleader on the sidelines.

"You know - times, addresses, digits, scores, pictures. Guy stuff."

She knew John wasn't going to give away any man club secrets, so she let it drop.

"So that's how you two roll, hunh?"

"Yep, that's it."

The smugness which he had suppressed earlier in their conversation was on full display now. Which tickled Carter no end.

"Well, if that boy doesn't walk in here this very minute, I'm going to tattoo a text right where he won't _ever_ forget it."

The threat was absurd, but it did make John laugh again, this time with all his teeth showing. She adored seeing the merry color rush over his ears and glistening cheekbones.

Taylor chose that moment to turn the key in the front door lock. As he stepped over the threshold, Carter could sense an explanation ready on his lips to counter the expected scolding.

She watched him take in the surprising scene: he glanced from his laughing mother to the quiet smiling man at her side; from the slumbering caretaker stretched out on the sofa to the golden baby raising her head in sleepy amazement.

Carter wanted to tell him, to tell them all, to shout to the whole wide world:

Tomorrow is here.

Tomorrow is now.

And it looks just like us.


End file.
